Today’s announcement by FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz that he has appointed highly regarded public interest legal scholar and litigator David C. Vladeck as the new Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection is terrific news. Mr. Vladeck has spent decades as a dedicated public interest attorney at Public Citizen. More recently, he has co-directed the critically important Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University (where he is also a professor of law).
We expect Mr. Vladeck will vigorously pursue, with Chairman Leibowitz’s support, a serious consumer protection agenda. Think about mortgages and other financial products, health marketing, privacy, online advertising, food marketing to children and adolescents–all of these issues and more will now get the intellectual and strategic attention they deserve.  Chairman Leibowitz deserves praise for selecting Mr. Vladeck. The Chairman also heeded the call last month from leading consumer and privacy groups, including Consumers Union, CSPI, USPIRG, Privacy Times, and my CDD, that he appoint someone truly dedicated to consumer protection. We are looking forward to a new era at the FTC.
