Others, including William Howard Taft and Robert Bork, argued that the decision and the principle it announced was entirely consistent with earlier case law. These scholars argue that much language in "Trans-Missouri Freight" was dicta, and also emphasized the Court's decision in "United States v. Joint Traffic Association", 171 U.S. 505 (1898), in which the Court announced that "ordinary contracts and combinations" did not offend the Sherman Act, because they restrained only trade "indirectly". Indeed, in his 1912 book on antitrust law, Taft reported that no critic of "Standard Oil" could succeed in Taft's challenge: to articulate one scenario in which the rule of reason would produce a result different from that produced under prior case law. In 1911, the Supreme Court announced "United States v. American Tobacco Co.", 221 U.S. 106 (1911). That decision held that Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which bans monopolization, did not ban the mere possession of a monopoly but banned only the unreasonable acquisition or maintenance of monopoly. This reflects a long-standing view that one can have a monopoly just by having a superior product and that it violates no law to produce such a product.