In the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (“RTAA”), Congress delegated its constitutionally granted power to set tariffs to the President. Trade agreements negotiated under the RTAA required no ex post congressional approval. Instead, the broad authority conferred upon the President was subject to congressional renewal every three years. Tariff reductions also were no longer made unilaterally via omnibus tariff legislation, but rather bilaterally via trade agreements and in exchange for comparable tariff reductions from foreign trading partners. The RTAA dramatically altered the governance structure that had controlled U.S. trade policymaking for over a century, laying a new institutional foundation that made U.S. postwar participation in, and leadership of, global trade liberalization and expansion possible. Indeed, the RTAA is arguably the most important piece of trade legislation of this century. It also is an unusual case of congressional delegation of policymaking authority to the President. Representative Hamilton Fish (R-N.Y.) called the RTAA “a betrayal of our representative form of government [that] amounts to an open admission by Congress that … it is now incompetent and unfit to legislate properly, intelligently and in the public interest.” The press described the RTAA as a “radical departure in commercial policy.” What accounts for this extraordinary delegation, especially by a legislative body better known for guarding its power than for giving it away?

During the 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission took on the powerful American Medical Association, hastening the end of the medical profession's domination of the health-care industry. The pivotal confrontation was the FTC's administrative action (the “FTC proceeding”), commenced in 1975, against the AMA. According to the FTC, ethical restrictions on physician advertising, solicitation, and contract practice bore no reasonable relationship to procompetitive concerns, the touchstone of the FTC's public-interest calculus. By eliminating these restraints, FTC commissioners and attorneys cut the ties that bound rank-and-file physicians to their national, state, and local medical societies, thereby undermining the structure of organized medicine. Stripped of its organizing principles and enforcement mechanisms, the medical establishment weakly resisted the formation of large-scale provider networks and the integration of insurance products and delivery systems, known as health maintenance organizations or HMOs.

World War II was a time of unprecedented industrial growth and urban and suburban expansion in California. War mobilization ushered in new types of postindustrial and technology-based industries. Military bases were established up and down the Pacific Coast. Factories suddenly materialized, supplying military hardware, jobs, and, in turn, attracting a new wave of migrants.