Congress created the FTC because the Justice Department’s antitrust enforcement lacked continuity across administrations

Evidence

This did not mean that the need for a developed body of law on the matter was not felt. Throughout the debate on the bill and on the related bill (which became the Clayton Act) to amend the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, complaint was rife at the failure of the Department of Justice to follow a consistent policy in anti-trust enforcement. … “The need has long been felt for an administrative board which would act in these matters in aid of the enforcement of the Sherman antitrust law, which would have precedents and traditions and a continuous policy and would be free from the effect of such changing incumbency

as has in the nature of things characterized the administration of the Attorney General’s office.”

— Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 627

Categorization

• SEED: Institutional-design thread: an independent commission was justified as a way around partisan turnover in the Attorney General’s office — relevant to LGST 1110 on institutions and continuity.
• XREF: Connects to the broader institutional-role theme of independent agencies vs. executive enforcement running through the legal-process volumes. — connects to: The FTC’s formal enforcement machinery could only handle around a hundred cases yearly — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 645; Enforcement discretion, not statutory text, shapes antitrust law’s meaning — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 477

Broader Connections

• Enforcement discretion, not statutory text, shapes antitrust law’s meaning #expands (0.75) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 477