The first Annual Conference sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute featured a number of prominent speakers and explored a number of important issues. The Conference had two principal focuses: substantive questions of antitrust liability and the future direction of public enforcement of the antitrust laws by the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and by the Federal Trade Commission. However, an issue of at least equal importance was barely discussed, although it has seriously affected the scope and direction of the antitrust laws. That issue: Private enforcement of the antitrust laws, and the significant undermining of those efforts by a number of restrictive recent decisions from the Supreme Court and lower courts.