FTC Rulemaking and Unintended Consequences
For obvious reasons, many scholars, lawyers, and policymakers are thinking hard about whether the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has authority to promulgate substantive “unfair methods of competition” (UMC) regulations. I first approached this issue a couple of years ago when the FTC asked me to present on the agency’s rulemaking powers. For my presentation, I focused on 1973’s National Petroleum Refiners Association v. FTC and, in particular, whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit correctly held that the FTC has authority to promulgate such rules. I ventured that relying on National Petroleum Refiners would present “litigation risk” for the FTC because the method of statutory interpretation used by the D.C. Circuit is out of step with how courts read statutes today. Richard Pierce, who presented at the same event, was even more blunt…