Regarding FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson’s resignation from the Federal Trade Commission, the following statement may be attributed to Free State Foundation President Randolph May:
“As she put in in the Wall Street Journal op-ed explaining her resignation, Commissioner Christine Wilson’s reached the point where she believed that a ’noisy exit’ was preferable to remaining. She acknowledged that elections have consequences and that she understood her own policy preferences likely wouldn’t prevail. But it is clear that Commissioner Wilson, to her mind, considered the problem with remaining not to be primarily differences of policy, but of process — differences of process that led to abuse of power and lawlessness at the agency.
Commissioner Wilson’s depiction of what’s transpired at the FTC is disturbing for what it portends for the agency’s intent to carry out its own mission within the confines of the law and judicial precedent. But, viewed through a wider lens, what has transpired at the FTC may have broader implications for the administrative state. Like the FTC, the FCC, SEC, CFTC, and other multi-member agencies are, by design,, bipartisan commissions (with the party of the president able to have a majority of seats), with commissioners serving fixed, and staggered terms. When they were established by Congress, one key rationale for the multi-member model was that collegiality among the commissioners from different parties, with their different expertises and experiences, would lead to better decisions. Obviously, the preexisting long-standing norms of collegiality and bipartisan cooperation, have completely broken down under Lina Khan’s chairmanship to the long-term detriment of the agency, assuming it can right itself. This is worth emphasizing at a time when there is much talk, sometimes too loose and unserious, about norms being broken."
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