This article analyses the rationality of the principle of proportionality as a justificatory method for solving cases involving conflicts of constitutional principles. It addresses the “problem of comparability”: a set of arguments claiming that proportionalists fail to understand what happens when constitutional principles collide. The problem of comparability suggests that balancing cannot be done if some conflicts of constitutional principles are, in reality, cases of noncomparability, incommensurability, incomparability, or vagueness. In this article, I challenge the views of both proportionalists and their skeptics. Against the skeptics, I argue that proportionality can survive the challenge posed by the problem of comparability. Against the proportionalists, I submit that proportionality cannot be understood as a system of tradeoffs between degrees of satisfaction of principles. If comparison among constitutional principles is to be rational, we need a different approach to normativity—one that allows for the possibility of parity.

I aspire to answer two questions regarding the concept of a corrective duty. The first concerns what it means to wrong others, thus triggering a demand for corrections (the ground question). The second relates to the proper content of corrective duties. I first illustrate how three prominent accounts of corrective duties—the Aristotelian model of correlativity, the Kantian idea that wronging corresponds to the violation of others’ right to freedom, and the more recent continuity view—have failed to answer the two questions satisfactorily. I then introduce my proposal, which holds that we wrong others when we fail to treat their status as moral agents as a source of stringent constraints on our action. I call it the moral neglect account. Once we have identified a common aim of corrective duties (counterbalancing moral neglect), we can fill their content in the various contexts in which wronging has occurred. I conclude by observing that it is not the primary role of corrective justice to assign responsibilities for damage reparations; in fact, requests for compensation make more sense if framed in distributive rather than corrective terms.

The “folk” theory of democracy that typically justifies the administrative state cannot help but lead to a discourse of constraint. If agency action is only legitimate when it mechanically applies the will of the voters as transposed by Congress through statutes, then the norms guiding that action will inevitably restrain agency discretion. As a result, attempts to establish the democratic credentials of the administrative state ironically obstruct the application of collective power. But this “folk” theory of democracy is bad theory. It is empirically incredible and, alarmingly, facilitates dangerous populist politics. Political theory instead suggests that a theory of democratic representation not only better explains legislative outcomes, but also deprives demagogues and deregulatory partisans of the fictions that prop up their agendas. After a brief survey of representative theory, this article will demonstrate that a model of trustee representation adequately describes administration, reinforces its democratic credentials and constitutes a space for politics in shaping the regulations that govern us all.