Beveridge at Eighty: Learning the Right Lessons

The eightieth anniversary of the Beveridge inquiry is a timely moment to consider how the landmark report is used within contemporary UK politics. Calls for a ‘new Beveridge’ reflect a desire for a rupture with the past and the creation of a radical new welfare consensus. But this reflects a misunderstanding: Beveridge's approach was organic in nature, building on decades of experimentation, politically contested rather than consensual, and intellectually pluralist rather than moored to a single ideological worldview. The real insight Beveridge offers us today flows not from his substantive agenda—which was rooted in a particular set of historic circumstances—but as an approach to securing social reform. Successful welfare advances over the last generation have drawn on these ‘Beveridgean instincts’. Rather than calling for a new twenty-first century blueprint to be handed down from above, reformers should build on experimentation and successful incremental change, from within the UK and abroad.     

Millian Liberalism and Extreme Pornography

How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom. Supporters of criminalization argue that Mill, often considered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underestimates the strengths of the Millian account of private conduct and free expression, and the consistency of Millian anticensorship with feminist values. A Millian contextual defense of liberty, however, suggests several other policy approaches to addressing the harms of pornography.     

Disability Discrimination Law in the United Kingdom and the New Civil Rights History: The Contribution of Caroline Gooding

This article concerns the theoretical and practical contribution of radical lawyer, feminist, and disability activist, Caroline Gooding to disability rights in the United Kingdom. It assesses the impact of her published work in the 1990s and translation of her insights into practice through her work on the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and later at the Disability Rights Commission, not least in securing in legislation a positive disability equality duty. In particular, it seeks to situate Gooding's contribution within the ‘new civil rights history’, with its emphasis on the role of lawyer as mediator, facilitator, and ‘gatekeeper’. It argues that through her engagement with strategic law enforcement, law reform, and the wider mobilization of the law, Gooding created ‘alternative visions and accounts’ of disability and so forged a decisive connection between disabled people as a social movement and the law, in ways of exemplary value to social movements more generally.     

Burying Bell: Managing the Judicialisation of Social Security Tribunals

The Social Security Act 1998 introduced fundamental changes to the tribunal system for hearing appeal claims in respect of benefits. This article examines the reasons for these changes to the largest tribunal system in the United Kingdom, and their implications for claimants. It emphasises the increasing legalism and approximation to ordinary courts of these tribunals. In particular, the article considers the implications of the reduction of lay membership of tribunals and the threats posed to the traditional inquisitorial approach.     

Dyadic Representation in a Westminster System

Is policy representation in contemporary Westminster systems solely a function of programmatic national parties, or does the election of legislators via single‐member districts result in MPs whose policy positions are individually responsive to public opinion in their constituencies? We generate new measures of constituency opinion in Britain and show that, in three different policy domains and controlling for MP party, the observed legislative behavior of MPs is indeed responsive to constituency opinion. The level of responsiveness is moderate, but our results do suggest a constituency‐MP policy bond that operates in addition to the well‐known bond between voters and parties.