ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that it was necessary "to change the character of the case load" in order to change the nature of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) control. While the development of class action suits, the harvest of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the broadening of standing to sue were professed to be advantageous for the consumer, they worked in fact to turn the FTC toward the challenge to corporate power desired and abetted by the consumerists. In 1966, during the burgeoning of antiwar and counterculture sentiment, Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was amended, changing the economics of private litigation and providing "the most important single inducement to potential consumer antitrust claimants in the history of the [Sherman] Act". The consumer movement found the malleability of antitrust policy to be serviceable in the quest to exert domination over the FTC.
