Discussion Groups / English Usage / April 2007

A small difference. IE:the difference between restrict and prevent. one aims
to restrict and the other aims to prevent but both want to curb what ever
the sentence referes to.

Nothing on its own.  The meaning is in the entire clause, "the
difference is one of degree".  It means that the alternatives
considered are really the same; they differ only in *how much* of that
one thing is to be applied.  As a rhetorical device, this is often
part of a debate where one side claims that two positions are
completely distinct, and the other side claims that they are not; the
implication is that the difference is really only theoretical.  (In
your example, it may not be possible to "prevent ... the review of
decisions", but relatively easy to "restrict" review to such an extent
that it is effectively precluded while still allowing such review *in
theory*.

Contrast "a distinction without a difference".

-GAWollman

It's like the joke about the woman who says no when a man asks her to
have sex with him, then he asks if she'd do it for $200,000 and she
says yes, then he asks if she'd do it for $20 and she say "What kind of
woman do you think I am?" The man replies, "We've already established
that. Now we're just haggling over the price."

The difference in degree is that $200,000 means she's a high-class call
girl, but $20 mean she's just a common prostitute. In either case she's
a whore; the only difference is one of degree.

I agree with the posters who have answered that a difference "of
degree" implies a larger or smaller amount of the thing that is being
talked about, and not a change in the kind of thing that is being
talked about.  The word "one" is not part of the expression, but is
used to avoid repeating the word "difference": the sentence could be
written "...their aim is to prevent or restrict (the difference is *a
difference* of degree) the review of decisions...".

The substitution of "one" is a matter of style, not grammar or
meaning, but the use of parentheses instead of commas to separate the
subordinate clause from the main clause is better punctuation.  If you
don't like parentheses, you can keep the commas by changing the clause
to a phrase: "...restrict, the difference *being* one of degree, ...".

A common construction is "differ in degree, not kind." Amount and
quantity, not sort and nature. Some examples via Google:

    what Arendt fails to realize is that virtually all
    modern legal philosophies and codes differ from
    those of totalitarianism only in degree, not kind.

    with respect to temporal/aspectual semantics, adults differ from
    children only in degree, not kind.