Common Legal Principles of Advanced Regulatory Systems

This paper provides an overview of some settled regulatory principles regarding public utilities in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Chile. The main finding is that regulatory law has a strong economic component, which is recognised by national courts. This feature is intertwined with several areas of the law (e.g. contract law, tort law, and international law), providing for tensions with economics. This paper proposes that the economic component should be the leading factor to solve regulatory disputes: courts should adjudicate to curb deadweight loss produced by inefficient firms or regulators. The paper concludes that as regulators are entrusted to correct market failures, their decisions should be seen as correct prima facie. As its correctness might not be in every decision, public utilities should be allowed to take actions against regulators' decisions on the grounds of efficiency and based on empirical evidence