Administrative Law – Judicial Control – Appellate Review of Federal Trade Commission Proceedings

During its forty-five year life the Federal Trade Commission has gone through some difficult periods to emerge today as one of the fundamental instrumentalities of government in the regulation of business. Its vast powers and influence, well known to lawyers, will not be explored here. Rather, the purpose of this comment is to appraise the extent of control which the judiciary now exercises over the commission in its adjudicative functions, so as to offer some indication to the practitioner of the probabilities regarding the outcome of judicial review on an appeal beyond the full commission. The approach to be used will be a study of Supreme Court cases involving the commission since 1914 along with a review of Federal Trade Commission cases that have been before the courts of appeals since 1947.