The Federal Trade Commission As an Independent Agency: Autonomy, Legitimacy, and Effectiveness

The Federal Trade Commission As an Independent Agency: Autonomy, Legitimacy, and Effectiveness

A9_KOVACIC & WINERMAN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 6/11/2015 8:15 PM The Federal Trade Commission as an Independent Agency: Autonomy, Legitimacy, and Effectiveness William E. Kovacic & Marc Winerman I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 2086 II. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE COMPETITION AGENCY TO THE POLITICAL PROCESS: DESIGN TRADEOFFS ................................... 2088 III. THE SOURCES OF POLITICAL PRESSURE ...................................... 2091 A. IMPLICATIONS FOR LAW DRAFTING AND INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN ................................................................................. 2092 B. THE FTC’S CHARTER ............................................................ 2092 IV. THE MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE .............................................. 2096 V. ORGANIZATIONAL CHOICES THAT CAN DETERMINE INDEPENDENCE ........................................................................... 2098 VI. UNIVERSAL PRESSURE POINTS FOR POLITICAL CONTROL OR INFLUENCE .................................................................................. 2100 A. THE APPOINTMENTS PROCESS ................................................ 2101 B. FUNDING ............................................................................... 2103 C. LEGISLATIVE CHANGES .......................................................... 2104 D. ROUTINE OVERSIGHT ............................................................ 2104 E. SETTING THE FORM OF JUDICIAL REVIEW ................................ 2105 Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy, George Washington University Law School; Non-Executive Director, United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority. From 2006 to 2011 he served as a member of the Federal Trade Commission and chaired the agency from March 2008 to March 2009. Formerly of the Federal Trade Commission, where he served for over 31 years as an attorney advisor to Kovacic and to FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen, and also in the Bureau of Consumer Protection, the Office of the General Counsel, and the Office of International Affairs. The authors are grateful to the Competition Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for comments on an earlier version of this Essay. The views expressed here are the authors’ alone. 2085 A9_KOVACIC & WINERMAN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 6/11/2015 8:15 PM 2086 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 100:2085 F. INCREASED MONITORING BY EXTERNAL PARTIES .................... 2105 G. THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE BREADTH OF DELEGATED AUTHORITY ........................................................ 2106 H. SUMMARY: SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESSURE POINTS ................ 2106 VII. HOW MUCH INDEPENDENCE IS DESIRABLE IN PRACTICE? .......... 2107 VIII. MEANS TO PRESERVE NECESSARY DEGREES OF AUTONOMY ........ 2109 A. GREATER SPECIFICATION OF AUTHORITY ................................ 2109 B. MORE TRANSPARENCY, INCLUDING RELIANCE ON POLICY STATEMENTS AND GUIDELINES ............................................... 2109 C. STRENGTHEN THE AGENCY’S PROCEDURAL SAFEGUARDS ......... 2110 D. ADJUST THE FOCUS OF THE LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT PROCESS ............................................................................... 2111 IX. CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 2112 I. INTRODUCTION On March 16, 1915, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) opened for business and began what has proven to be a uniquely compelling experiment in economic regulation.1 The FTC was the first law enforcement agency to be designed “from the keel up” as a competition agency.2 One vital consideration in forming the new institution was to define its relationship to the political process. Among other features in the original FTC Act, Congress provided 1. The creation of the FTC is recounted in Marc Winerman, The Origins of the FTC: Concentration, Cooperation, Control, and Competition, 71 ANTITRUST L.J. 1 (2003). One measure of the significance of the FTC’s creation and operations is the extraordinary attention that the agency has commanded in commentary about competition policy. See generally DANIEL A. CRANE, THE INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE OF ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT (2011) (examining the U.S. antitrust enforcement system and focusing chiefly on the FTC in discussing the federal antitrust agencies). 2. When Congress adopted the first U.S. federal antitrust statute, the Sherman Act, in 1890, it did not create a separate antitrust body to enforce the law. The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) assumed responsibility for enforcing the new law, and a dedicated enforcement unit, the Antitrust Division, was formed in 1933. For information on the creation of the Antitrust Division, see History of the Antitrust Division, U.S. DEP’T JUST., http://www.justice.gov/atr/about/division- history.html (last visited May. 18, 2015). Congress had created the FTC’s predecessor agency, the Bureau of Corporations, in 1903. However, the Bureau, which was initially within the Department of Commerce and Labor (and later within the Department of Commerce), was a purely investigative agency without enforcement authority. Act of Feb. 12, 1903, 32 Stat. 827. Canada enacted the first national competition law in 1889, but did not establish a specialized institution to implement the statute. On the creation of Canada’s antitrust system, see D. Jeffrey Brown, Introduction to Competition Law, in COMPETITION ACT & COMMENTARY 1, 6–13 (Stikeman Elliott LLP ed., 2015). A9_KOVACIC & WINERMAN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 6/11/2015 8:15 PM 2015] THE FTC AS AN INDEPENDENT AGENCY 2087 that the agency’s commissioners would have fixed, seven-year terms and that a commissioner could be removed during his or her term only for cause.3 Through these and other design choices, Congress created what would come to be known as the world’s first “independent” competition agency. The FTC’s degree of insulation from direct political control supplied an influential model of institutional design and contributed to the acceptance of a norm, evident in modern commentary about competition law, that public enforcement agencies should be politically independent.4 This Essay examines the relationship of competition agencies to the political process. We use the experience of the FTC to address three major issues. First, what does it mean to say that a competition agency is “independent”? Second, how much insulation from political control can a competition agency achieve in practice? Third, how is the pursuit of political independence properly reconciled with demands that a competition agency be accountable for its decisions—an important determinant of legitimacy—and with the need to engage with elected officials to be effective in performing functions such as advocacy? In addressing these questions, we seek to develop themes we have addressed in earlier work involving the establishment and operations of the FTC.5 We approach the topic in the spirit of Professor Herbert Hovenkamp, whose work shows how historical research can improve our understanding of a competition system. Professor Hovenkamp’s scholarship has deeply influenced our approach to this field, and we are honored to participate in a 3. See 15 U.S.C § 41 (2012). The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the removal provision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935). 4. See R. Shyam Khemani & Mark A. Dutz, The Instruments of Competition Policy and Their Relevance for Economic Development, in REGULATORY POLICIES AND REFORM: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE 16, 28 (Claudio R. Frischtak ed., 1995) (“The competition agency should be independent and insulated from political and budgetary interference.”). 5. See generally William E. Kovacic, Competition Agencies, Independence, and the Political Process, in COMPETITION POLICY AND THE ECONOMIC APPROACH: FOUNDATIONS AND LIMITATIONS 291 (Josef Drexl et al. eds., 2011); William E. Kovacic, Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, 57 ANTITRUST L.J. 869 (1989); William E. Kovacic & Marc Winerman, Competition Policy and the Application of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 76 ANTITRUST L.J. 929 (2010) [hereinafter Kovacic & Winerman, Section 5]; Winerman, supra note 1; Marc Winerman & William E. Kovacic, Outpost Years for a Start-Up Agency: The FTC from 1921–1925, 77 ANTITRUST L.J. 145 (2010) [hereinafter Winerman & Kovacic, Outpost Years]; Marc Winerman & William E. Kovacic, The William Humphrey and Abram Myers Years: The FTC from 1925 to 1929, 77 ANTITRUST L.J. 701 (2011). Our own work is inspired both by the emphasis Professor Hovenkamp has placed on history as an informative tool for understanding regulatory agency behavior and by the work of scholars such as Eleanor Fox, Edward Iacobucci, and Michael Trebilcock who have focused attention on institutional design choices associated with the creation of numerous new competition law systems since the early 1990s. See generally Eleanor M. Fox, Antitrust and Institutions: Design and Change, 41 LOY. U. CHI. L.J. 473 (2010); Michael J. Trebilcock & Edward M. Iacobucci, Designing Competition Law Institutions: Values, Structure, and Mandate, 41 LOY. U. CHI. L.J. 455 (2010). A9_KOVACIC & WINERMAN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 6/11/2015 8:15 PM 2088 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 100:2085 symposium that celebrates his extraordinary contributions to competition law and policy. II. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE COMPETITION AGENCY TO THE POLITICAL PROCESS: DESIGN TRADEOFFS The suggestion that competition agencies be independent reflects a desire to enable enforcement

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