Judicial Scrutiny of Regulatory Decisions at the UK’s Specialist Competition Appeal Tribunal

Abstract

This chapter explores the determinants of judicial scrutiny of regulatory decisions at the UK’s specialist Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT); a unique feature of the UK’s regulatory and competition law landscape. Unlike ordinary courts, the CAT’s bench combines legal and non-legal expertise in areas such as economics, business and accountancy. Despite its specialist nature, however, and contrary to what intuition would suggest, the CAT does not always afford a narrow margin of appreciation to the regulators’ discretionary assessments. Rather, as the chapter demonstrates, the CAT’s scrutiny of regulatory decisions is determined by a tripartite relationship between the expert regulators, the expert CAT and the generalist Court of Appeal. It is the interplay between the specialist/specialist relationship, which characterises judicial scrutiny of the regulators’ decisions by the CAT and the generalist/specialist relationship, which in turn characterises judicial scrutiny of the CAT’s assessments by the Court of Appeal that determines the degree of deference to the regulators’ discretionary assessments.