Professor Richard J. Pierce, Jr.
83 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 2026
Published in Connection With the Law Review’s 2014 Symposium “The FTC at 100”
In this contribution to a symposium in honor of the 100th anniversary of
the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), Professor Pierce describes the
problems that FTC has experienced as a result of conflicts between its practices
and basic principles of administrative law. He traces those problems to
the history of the FTC, including the language of the FTC Act of 1914 and
FTC’s attempt to implement that statute. He describes the ways in which the
conflicts between FTC practices and administrative law handicap FTC’s efforts
to perform its antitrust mission. He then proposes a combination of
changes in antitrust statutes that would allow FTC to perform its antitrust mission
more effectively over the next century. Those changes include: (1) repeal
sections 5 and 13(b) of the FTC Act; (2) confer on FTC power to issue legislative
rules to implement the Sherman and Clayton Acts; (3) confer on FTC
exclusive jurisdiction to resolve civil cases that arise under the Sherman and
Clayton Acts; and, (4) replace oral evidentiary hearings with paper hearings.
