Regulation

Overview

Regulation is at the core of how modern states seek to govern the activities of individual citizens as well as corporate and governmental actors. Broadly defined it includes the use of legal and non-legal techniques to manage social and economic risks. Traditionally regulation is associated with prescriptive law, public agencies and criminal as well as administrative sanctions. But the politics of the shrinking state and deregulation have meant that intrusive and blunt forms of legal regulation have given way at times to facilitative, reflexive and procedural law which seeks to balance public and private interests. More recently public health crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis have lead to re-regulation and renewed interest in state intervention in private economic activity. Enduring policy debates address whether there is in practice too much, too little or the wrong type of regulation in different policy areas.

This course examines what role different forms of law play in contemporary regulatory regimes. It thereby analyses how legal regulation constructs specific relationships between law and society and how legal regulation is involved in mediating conflicts between private and public power.

The course discusses key conceptual approaches for understanding regulation. How can economic reasoning be employed in order to justify legal regulation? Does a focus on institutions help to understand the operation of regulatory regimes? What rationalities, and hence ‘governmentalities’ are involved in regulating through law? What role do emotions, such as fear of illness and trust in experts, play in regulatory interactions?

The conceptual approaches are then further analysed through reference to specific legal regulatory regimes 'in action'.  The course has been restructured: over both Michaelmas Term and Hilary Term a seminar on a specific conceptual approach is followed by a seminar that discusses how that approach may or may not explain how a specific regulatory regime works.  

The course thus provides an opportunity for students to examine the pervasive phenomenon of regulation with reference to different disciplinary perspectives, in particular law, sociology, politics and economics and to gain detailed knowledge of substantive regulatory law in relation to cutting-edge regulatory developments.

These cover, with reference to UK and EU law, the use of economic incentive regulation in emissions trading, how public interests inform EU regulation of energy generation, Chinese Social Credit systems as a distinct governmentality, as well as reliance on the regulatory capacity of technology.  The course should appeal to those interested in the theory and practice of regulation, jurisprudence, and selected fields of law that inform the case studies.

The course is assessed through two assessed essays in Trinity Term.

Relationship to “Law and Computer Science” option

Regulation differs from the BCL/MJur “Law and Computer Science” option in its focus on regulation and legal solutions to the challenges created by digital technologies rather than, as for Law and Computer Science, the effects of digital technology on the nature of legal work and how lawyers and computer scientists can work together to devise technical solutions to deal with them. The options will not overlap and may therefore be taken together. The ‘Regulation’ course is also well compatible with the ‘Law and Technology’ half-option.

 Convenor

Dr. Bettina Lange, Associate Professor in Law and Regulation