A near-ubiquitous concept in legal debates on contemporary approaches to market regulation and reform, liberalisation broadly speaking involves a transition from controlled to competitive markets. Yet for many, liberalisation implies not merely practical processes and legal instruments of economic reorganisation and governance, but moreover a higher-level conception of how markets fit within society, and thus how law might be deployed to achieve wider social and economic goals. This article explores the concept of liberalisation in both its technical and more-disputed normative dimensions, seeking to situate the latter within an understanding of the functioning — and limitations — of the former.