The Federal Trade Commission: The Development of the Law which led to its Establishment

Abstract

It was Munn vs. Illinois that first interpreted the constitutional provision empowering Congress to regulate commerce in such a way as to charge private business with a public interest. Since that epochal finding our courts have made comparatively swift progress, reaching ultimately (through the Standard Oil and tobacco decisions) a federal trade commission to regulate competition in trade and to restrain illegal combinations. All of this has been done during the professional life of many lawyers of today, for Munn vs. Illinois was decided in 1876.Writers upon the trend of legislation and of court decisions had clearly predicted this last development of corporation law. The incident of climax importance however, was the remanding of the oil and tobacco cases to the circuit courts where the decrees of dissolution were to be worked out in conjunction with the department of justice. This was administrative work, and a department of the executive branch of the government should do it. Hence the creation of the trade commission, empowered to investigate the carrying out of the decrees of the supreme court and to prepare the form of decree in certain cases referred to it by the circuit courts.