Professors David A. Hyman and William E. Kovacic
83 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1948
Published in Connection With the Law Review’s 2014 Symposium “The FTC at 100”
The conventional wisdom is that the FTC was the governmental
equivalent of a leper colony prior to 1969, and its credibility and reputation
were restored only by the adoption of the wise recommendations in the 1969
ABA Report. There is no question that the FTC deserves plenty of criticism
for its pre-1969 performance. It is also beyond doubt that there has been a
dramatic turn-around in the intervening forty-five years, as the FTC adopted
the recommendations in the 1969 Report. But, before we simply genuflect at
the wisdom of those responsible for the ABA Report and the inherent virtue of
their recommendations, it is worth noting that those recommendations also
placed the FTC’s continued existence at risk as well—and did so for an entirely
new set of reasons than had been the case pre-1969. Indeed, the last
forty-five years of the FTC’s history (which are assuredly an improvement on
the first fifty-five) are still a testament to the unintended consequences that can
accompany even the best of reform proposals.
