THE FTC DURING THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF JOHN F. KENNEDY (1961-63)
AND LYNDON B. JOHNSON (1963-69)
Carl Auerbach, The Federal Trade Commission: Internal Organization and Procedure, 48 MINN. L. REV. 393 (1964). This article is based on a report prepared by the author for the Administrative Conference of the United States.
EDWARDS F. COX, ROBERT C. FELLMETH, JOHN E. SCHULZ, “THE NADER REPORT” ON THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION (1969).
JAMES LANDIS, REPORT ON REGULATORY AGENCIES TO THE PRESIDENT-ELECT (1960). Landis, as noted previously, had served as an FTC Commissioner from 1933 to 1934; as an SEC Commissioner from 1934 to 1937 and SEC Chairman from 1935 to 1937; as Dean of Harvard Law School from 1937 to 1946; as Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board from 1946 to 1947; and as a special assistant to John F. Kennedy from 1960 to 1961. He had long worked with John F. Kennedy (and JFK’s father, who had been SEC Chairman while Landis was a non-Chairman Commissioner). The report includes a retrospective analysis of the status of the FTC (and other agencies) at the end of the Eisenhower administration, and draws on that analysis to make forward-looking recommendations. For example, the report proposed an internal reorganization of the FTC’s Bureau’s that the agency soon implemented and Reorganization Plan No. 4 of 1961, which President Kennedy soon announced.
REPORT OF THE ABA COMMISSION TO STUDY THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION (1969). This study was requested by President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Nader Report. As the Landis Report looked backward to the Eisenhower Administration and forward to the Kennedy Administration, the ABA’s report looked backward to the Kennedy Administration and forward to the Commission under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter. The ABA Commission was chaired by Miles W. Kirkpatrick, who would soon become FTC Chairman, and the Commission’s Counsel was Robert Pitofsky, future Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, Commissioner, and Chairman.
Books by Commissioners and Commission Staff
MARY GARDINER JONES, TEAR DOWN THE WALLS: A WOMAN’S TRIUMPH (2007). Jones worked for the Office of Strategic Services before attending Yale Law School, where she was managing editor of the Law Journal. Following a career in the private sector and the Justice Department, she served as an FTC Commissioner – the first woman to hold that post – from 1964 to 1973.
WILLARD F. MUELLER, BATTLING FOR ANTITRUST POLICY (2009). Mueller was Director of the Bureau of Economics during most of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.
Oral Histories
Paul Rand Dixon, interview conducted by the John F. Kennedy Library, 1968. Dixon served as Chairman from 1961 to 1969 and remained as a Commissioner (with two brief stints as Chair) until 1981. He had first come to the Commission in 1938, and left only to serve in the Navy from 1942 to 1945 and, from 1957 to 1961, to serve as Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee.
Mary Gardiner Jones, interviewed by FTC staff, 2003. See biography above.
A. Leon Higginbotham, interview conducted by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, 1976. Judge Higginbotham served as a Commissioner from 1962 to 1964, when he was appointed to the Federal bench, eventually becoming Chief Judge of the Third Circuit. He was the first African-American Commissioner.
NORMAN SILBER, WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED, THE LIFE OF PHILIP ELMAN: AN ORAL HISTORY IN MR. ELMAN’S WORDS (2004). Elman served as a Commissioner from 1961 to 1970. The interview covers Elman’s career, and the book takes its title from his time in the Solicitor General’s office, before he came to the Commission, when Elman played an important and highly controversial role in seminal civil rights decisions.
In addition, the ABA Oral History Project has an interview, conducted in 2008, with Caswell Hobbs. Hobbs held various positions at the FTC from 1967 to 1973. He has also been in private practice and is a past Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Antirust Law.
Manuscript Collections
Paul Rand Dixon Papers, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA. As of September 2014, these records (which were previously open to the public) are closed.
Philip Elman Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Cambridge, MA. (Finding aid).
A. Leon Higginbotham Papers, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA, and Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. As of September 2014, both of these collections remain closed.
Mary Gardiner Jones Papers, Syracuse University Library, Syracuse, NY. (Finding aid).
John Reilly Papers, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA. Reilly served as a Commissioner from 1964 to 1967.
William Howard Taft IV Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Taft was a member of Ralph Nader’s study group, examining the Federal Trade Commission during the late 1960s. He later served as an adviser to Casper Weinberger when Weinberger became Chairman of the FTC. Most of the collection focuses on Taft’s subsequent career.
See also materials listed under Broad Surveys.