ABSTRACT
Compared with many other federal regulatory agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its siblings of the 1970s are relative newcomers. Indeed, Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate surface transportation industries more than a century ago (in 1887), and the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Trade Commission were created to regulate commercial banks and deceptive trade practices, respectively, nearly ninety years later. The first great burst of federal regulatory activity took place in the 1930s, when Congress created the Federal Power Commission, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Maritime Commission, and the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB).
