At the Turning Point: The Commission in 1978

Abstract

This article examines the Federal Trade Commission in 1978—at the midpoint of the last twenty years of its history. The year 1978 saw the Commission at the height of its powers and influence. Over the prior ten years its mandate had been significantly expanded by a supportive Congress and successive administrations. Its docket of consumer protective initiatives, antitrust actions and economic studies was full. There seemed little that the Commission was reluctant to challenge or legally unable to accomplish.

Nineteen seventy-eight also was the point at which the tide turned, when growing dissatisfaction with regulation generally and with a number of specific FTC initiatives produced a strong backlash that tended to overshadow the Commission's many accomplishments and, for a time, imperiled the agency's existence. Congress relieved the crisis in 1980 by passing legislation which preserved the Commission's basic statutory mandate but imposed restrictions on certain rule-making proceedings and established procedural safeguards on the future exercise of the agency's authority.

Therefore, the Commission began to change direction. With the advent of the Reagan Administration, a more cautious and restrained attitude ensued, and the Commission in recent years has significantly reduced the number and range of activities it has undertaken. Thus, 1978 was a critical point in the agency's history, both when compared to where the agency had been, and to the direction it took thereafter.