Playing Kant at the Court of King Arthur

This article contrasts the sense in which those whom Bernard Williams called ‘political realists’ and John Rawls are committed to the idea that political philosophy has to be distinctively political. Distinguishing the realist critique of political moralism from debates over ideal and non-ideal theory, it is argued that Rawls is more realist than many realists realise, and that realists can learn more about how to make a distinctively political vision of how our life together should be organised from his theorising, although it also points to a worrying tendency among Rawlsians to reach for inappropriately moralised arguments. G. A. Cohen’s advocacy of socialism and the second season of HBO’s The Wire are used as examples to illustrate these points.

Economic evidence in regulatory disputes: revisiting the court-regulatory agency relationship in the US and the UK

This article examines the issue of the appropriate scope of review of economic evidence enshrined in the discretionary assessments of utility regulators in the US and the UK. It advances a balance of institutional competencies approach to the question of the degree of deference owed to the regulatory agency’s economic assessments. In doing so, it revisits the doctrinal positions advanced in the US and UK for the substantive review of administrative discretion, so as to become attuned to the challenges posed by economic evidence. Drawing on insights from political science and economics, the suggested approach illuminates the institutional disadvantages of the courts that may warrant a high degree of deference. At the same time, however, it remains sensitive to the polycentric elements of regulatory disputes as well as to a number of institutional realties that may attenuate the weight of such comparative institutional disadvantages.