Antitrust Administration and Enforcement

The importance of the nation’s antitrust policy requires that administration and enforcement powers and techniques be equal to the huge task of effectively safeguarding competition. The recommendations of the Attorney General’s Committee represent a statesmanlike effort to balance the need for effective enforcement with the need for the preservation of fairness and the conservation of time and resources in antitrust litigation. Some of the recommendations will undoubtedly engender heated controversy; others seem relatively uncontroversial.

Many individual topics are dealt with in the Report of the committee and space does not permit comment upon all of them. The following discussion is confined to what would seem to be the most important aspects of the committee’s work on administration and enforcement. The section of the Report is divided into four parts, and the comments made here follow the same organization: (1) The Department of Justice; (2) The Federal Trade Commission; (3) Related Jurisdiction of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission; and ( 4) Private Antitrust Suits.