Equality is an ideal to which we all aspire. Yet the more closely we examine it, the more its meaning shifts. How do we explain how equal treatment can in effect lead to inequality, while unequal treatment might be necessary in order to achieve equality? The apparent paradox can be understood if we accept that equality can be formulated in different ways, depending on which underlying conception is chosen. In this highly readable yet challenging book, Sandra Fredman examines the ways in which discrimination law addresses these questions.
The new edition retains the format of the highly successful first edition, while incorporating the many new developments in discrimination law since 2002, including the Equality Act 2010, human rights law, and EU law. By using a thematic approach, the book illuminates the major issues in discrimination law, while at the same time imparting a detailed understanding of the legal provisions. The comparative approach is particularly helpful; by examining comparable law in the US, India, Canada, and South Africa, as well as the UK, the book exposes common problems and canvasses differing solutions. As in the previous edition, the book locates discrimination in its wider social and historical context. Drawing on the author's wide experience of equality law in many jurisdictions, she creates an analytic framework to assess the substantive law.
The book is a thought-provoking and accessible overview of the way in which equality law has adjusted to new and increasingly complex challenges. It concludes that progress has been evident, but uneven. Those dedicated to equality still face an exacting, but ultimately deeply rewarding, task.

Feminist Frontiers in Climate Justice provides a compelling demonstration of the deeply gendered and unequal effects of the climate emergency, alongside the urgent need for a feminist perspective to expose and address these structural political, social and economic inequalities. Taking a nuanced, multidisciplinary approach, this book explores new ways of thinking about how climate change interacts with gender inequalities and feminist concerns with rights and law, and how the human world is bound up with the non-human, natural world. With contributions from leading scholars in law, feminism, human rights and politics, this book considers how equality is conceptualised experienced and used in policies, law and practice that are integral to climate justice. Chapters reveal how international and national policy and legal frameworks fall short on gender equality and climate justice. Overall, the book demonstrates that the climate crisis demands an ambitious and transformative approach to equality, including developing feminist ideas of care and social reproduction, to reconstruct law and policy towards a more just world for all. This ground-breaking book will be essential reading for scholars across many areas of law including environmental law, human rights, public international law, law and gender, and law and development. Its discussion of the international framework alongside in-depth case studies and assessments of women's mobilization strategies will also be highly relevant to social scientists, officials in international organizations, policymakers, lawyers and activists.

Socio-economic rights raise many complex challenges to the traditional understanding of the nature of human rights, the role of courts in democratic society and the nature of remedies. This collection draws together the sophisticated and constructive solutions developed by the foremost thinkers to fully recognise socio-economic rights, demonstrating how traditional concepts and obstacles can be re-characterised and modified to ensure respect for the indivisibility of human rights. This important collection provides crucial insights into the emerging and perennial challenges to socio-economic rights. Including an original introduction, it is an ideal resource for those new to the study of socio-economic rights, academics, policy makers and all those interested in using human rights to achieve social justice.

Until recently, age discrimination attracted little social opprobrium. However, ageism has now been thrust onto the equality agenda by the spectre of an ageing population. This has led to a range of policies on 'active ageing.' Most importantly, legally binding legislation prohibiting age discrimination in employment will need to be in place by 2006. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the key issues. To what extent is age inevitably linked with declining capacity? What are the central aims of a policy on age equality, and how can these be realised in law? How should law and policy address age discrimination in health, education and employment? What lessons can be learned from the US and Europe? And should young people be dealt with in the same way as older people? This book answers these questions in a series of chapters by experts from a wide range of disciplines. It begins by examining the nature of the ageing process and then turns to a detailed analysis of the concept of age equality. In the light of this analysis, the following three chapters critically assess employment, education, and health. A separate chapter is devoted to discrimination against children. The last two chapters consider the experience in the US, and other European countries.

Human rights have traditionally been understood as protecting individual freedom against intrusion by the State. In this book, Sandra Fredman argues that this understanding requires radical revision. Human rights are based on a far richer view of freedom, which goes beyond being let alone, and instead pays attention to individuals' ability to exercise their rights.
This view fundamentally shifts the focus of human rights. As well as restraining the State, human rights require the State to act positively to remove barriers and facilitate the exercise of freedom. This in turn breaks down traditional distinctions between civil and political rights and socio-economic rights. Instead, all rights give rise to a range of duties, both negative and positive. However, because positive duties have for so long been regarded as a question of policy or aspiration, little sustained attention has been given to their role in actualising human rights. Drawing on comparative experience from India, South Africa, the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union, Canada and the UK, this book aims to create a theoretical and applied framework for understanding positive human rights duties.
Part I elaborates the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity underpinning a positive approach to human rights duties, and argues that the dichotomy between democracy and human rights is misplaced. Instead, positive human rights duties should strengthen rather than substitute for democracy, particularly in the face of globalization and privatization. Part II considers justiciability, fashioning a democratic role for the courts based on their potential to stimulate deliberative democracy in the widerenvironment. Part III applies this framework to key positive duties, particularly substantive equality and positive duties to provide, traditionally associated with the Welfare State or socio-economic rights.

This book is a challenging, thought-provoking yet highly accessible introduction to discrimination law. It takes a thematic approach, illuminating the major issues in discrimination law, while imparting an in-depth understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of legal responses to complex social problems of inequality. This is enhanced by the comparative approach. By considering equality law in the UK, US, India, Canada, and South Africa, as well as the European Union and under the European Convention on Human Rights, the book exposes common problems across different jurisdictions and canvasses a variety of differing solutions. As in the highly successful previous editions, the book locates discrimination law within its historical and social context. One of its major strengths is the development of an analytic framework of substantive equality, drawing on a range of sources, and the author's wide experience of equality law in many jurisdictions. As well as chapters charting the social challenges and legal responses, the book compares the ways in which different jurisdictions formulate grounds of discrimination or protected characteristics; the meaning of key concepts such as direct discrimination (disparate treatment); indirect discrimination (disparate impact); and when limitations on equality are legitimate. Later chapters test these concepts in some of the most challenging contexts: pregnancy and parenting, equal pay, reasonable accommodation, and sexual harassment; as well as to the particularly controversial issue of affirmative action or deliberate preference policies. Discussing at length how racisms, sexism, LGBTQ+ rights, and other topics impact these contexts. The final chapter asks how the right to equality can be made more effective, critically assessing the paradigm individual complaints model, and possible alternatives, from class actions and strategic litigation to mainstreaming and positive duties to promote equality.

Thousands of children from minority and disadvantaged groups will never cross the threshold of a classroom. What can human rights contribute to the struggle to ensure that every learner is able to access high quality education? This brilliant interdisciplinary collection explores how a human rights perspective offers new insights and tools into the current obstacles to education. It examines the role of private actors, the need to hold states to account for the quality of education, how to strike a balance between religion, culture and education, the innovative responses needed to guarantee girls' right to education and the role of courts. This unique book draws together contributors who have been deeply involved in this field from both developing and developed countries which enriches the understanding and remedial approaches to tackle current obstacles to universal education.

This book is a challenging, thought-provoking yet highly accessible introduction to discrimination law. It takes a thematic approach, illuminating the major issues in discrimination law, while imparting an in-depth understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of legal responses to complex social problems of inequality. This is enhanced by the comparative approach. By considering equality law in the UK, US, India, Canada, and South Africa, as well as the European Union and under the European Convention on Human Rights, the book exposes common problems across different jurisdictions and canvasses a variety of differing solutions. As in the highly successful previous editions, the book locates discrimination law within its historical and social context. One of its major strengths is the development of an analytic framework of substantive equality, drawing on a range of sources, and the author's wide experience of equality law in many jurisdictions. As well as chapters charting the social challenges and legal responses, the book compares the ways in which different jurisdictions formulate grounds of discrimination or protected characteristics; the meaning of key concepts such as direct discrimination (disparate treatment); indirect discrimination (disparate impact); and when limitations on equality are legitimate. Later chapters test these concepts in some of the most challenging contexts: pregnancy and parenting, equal pay, reasonable accommodation, and sexual harassment; as well as to the particularly controversial issue of affirmative action or deliberate preference policies. Discussing at length how racisms, sexism, LGBTQ+ rights, and other topics impact these contexts. The final chapter asks how the right to equality can be made more effective, critically assessing the paradigm individual complaints model, and possible alternatives, from class actions and strategic litigation to mainstreaming and positive duties to promote equality.

This thoughtfully edited volume explores the operation of equality and discrimination law in times of crisis. It aims to understand how existing inequalities are exacerbated in crises and whether equality law has the tools to understand and address this contingency. Experience during the COVID-19 crisis shows that the pandemic has acted as a catalyst for 'exponential inequalities' related to racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, and ableism. Yet, the field of equality law (which is meant to be addressing such discrimination or inequality) has had little immediate relevance in mitigating these exponential inequalities. This is despite the fact that countries like the UK have a rather recent and state-of-the-art legislation in the field, namely the Equality Act 2010. Exponential Inequalities offers readers an understanding of how these inequalities came to be and how crises such as the global pandemic, the climate emergency, or the economic downturn, can exacerbate an already untenable situation. It illuminates both the structural and the conceptual, as well as the practical and doctrinal difficulties currently experienced in equality law, and discusses whether or not equality law even has the tools to both understand and then address this contingency. Written by a team of internationally recognized experts, Exponential Inequalities provides a comparative perspective on the functioning of equality laws across a range of contexts and jurisdictions and represents an essential read for scholars and policy makers alike.

Women are still far from equal to men yet discrimination on the grounds of sex is unlawful. In this compelling, new book, Sandra Fredman asks the question: why has the law had so little impact? She argues that it is due to inherent limitations within the legal framework. In particular, the law is unable to address the division of labour within the family, a factor which continues to prove a serious impediment to women's progress. The author concludes that only when this caring work is properly valued, and men and women participate equally in both family life and the paid workforce will real progress in the arena of sexual equality be made.

This set of essays constitutes a key contribution to the debate about the role of human rights law in combating race discrimination. Including essays by a range of leading experts, the book is a particularly important source of information and critical analysis for students, researchers, and policy makers aiming to understand both the new race Directive adopted by the EU, and the role of international human rights law, which was the focus of the UN world conference on racism, 2001.

This set of essays constitutes a key contribution to the debate about the role of human rights law in combating race discrimination. Including essays by a range of leading experts, the book is a particularly important source of information and critical analysis for students, researchers, and policy akers aiming to understand both the new race Directive adopted by the EU, and the role of international human rights law, which was the focus of the UN world conference on racism, 2001.

Human rights have traditionally been understood as protecting individual freedom against intrusion by the State. In this book, Sandra Fredman argues that this understanding requires radical revision. Human rights are based on a far richer view of freedom, which goes beyond being let alone, and instead pays attention to individuals' ability to exercise their rights.
This view fundamentally shifts the focus of human rights. As well as restraining the State, human rights require the State to act positively to remove barriers and facilitate the exercise of freedom. This in turn breaks down traditional distinctions between civil and political rights and socio-economic rights. Instead, all rights give rise to a range of duties, both negative and positive. However, because positive duties have for so long been regarded as a question of policy or aspiration, little sustained attention has been given to their role in actualising human rights. Drawing on comparative experience from India, South Africa, the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union, Canada and the UK, this book aims to create a theoretical and applied framework for understanding positive human rights duties.
Part I elaborates the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity underpinning a positive approach to human rights duties, and argues that the dichotomy between democracy and human rights is misplaced. Instead, positive human rights duties should strengthen rather than substitute for democracy, particularly in the face of globalization and privatization. Part II considers justiciability, fashioning a democratic role for the courts based on their potential to stimulate deliberative democracy in the widerenvironment. Part III applies this framework to key positive duties, particularly substantive equality and positive duties to provide, traditionally associated with the Welfare State or socioeconomic rights.

As the millennium draws to a close, it is clear that equality between men and women remains a pipe-dream. Thus argues Sandra Fredman in her stimulating, new book on women and the law. Women's pay still lags significantly behind that of men; and women continue to congregate in low status, low paid jobs. Yet men and women are now formally equal before the law: indeed, legislation positively outlawing discrimination has been in force for over two decades both in the UK and the European Union. The key question asked by the author is: Why has the law had so little impact? The answer, the author argues, lies in the structure of the law itself. In a wide-ranging examination of sources drawn from political theory, social history and law, the first part of the book develops a critical framework to illuminate the limitations of the law in addressing women's disadvantaged status. In particular, the author unmask the apparent objectivity and neutrality of law, exposing the assumptions which have systematically impeded women's progress. This book is intended for this book will have a wide, multi-disciplinary appeal, and will interest all those engaged in women's studies, labour lawyers, trade u

Courts in different jurisdictions face similar human rights questions. Does the death penalty breach human rights? Does freedom of speech include racist speech? Is there a right to health? This book uses the prism of comparative law to examine the fascinating ways in which these difficult questions are decided. On the one hand, the shared language of human rights suggests that there should be similar solutions to comparable problems. On the other hand, there are important differences. Constitutional texts are worded differently; courts have differing relationships with the legislature; and there are divergences in socio-economic development, politics, and history. Nevertheless, there is a growing transnational conversation between courts, with cases in one jurisdiction being cited in others. Part I sets out the cross-cutting themes which shape the ways judges respond to challenging human rights issues. It examines when it is legitimate to refer to foreign materials; how universality and cultural relativity are balanced in human rights law; the appropriate role of courts in adjudicating human rights in a democracy; and the principles judges use to interpret human rights texts. The book is unusual in transcending the distinction between socio-economic rights and civil and political rights. Part II applies these cross-cutting themes to comparing human rights law in the US, UK, South Africa, Canada, and India. Its focus is on seven particularly challenging issues: the death penalty, abortion, housing, health, speech, education and religion, with the aim of inspiring further comparative examination of other pressing human rights issues.

Courts in different jurisdictions face similar human rights questions. Does the death penalty breach human rights? Does freedom of speech include racist speech? Is there a right to health? This book uses the prism of comparative law to examine the fascinating ways in which these difficult questions are decided. On the one hand, the shared language of human rights suggests that there should be similar solutions to comparable problems. On the other hand, there are important differences. Constitutional texts are worded differently; courts have differing relationships with the legislature; and there are divergences in socio-economic development, politics, and history. Nevertheless, there is a growing transnational conversation between courts, with cases in one jurisdiction being cited in others. Part I sets out the cross-cutting themes which shape the ways judges respond to challenging human rights issues. It examines when it is legitimate to refer to foreign materials; how universality and cultural relativity are balanced in human rights law; the appropriate role of courts in adjudicating human rights in a democracy; and the principles judges use to interpret human rights texts. The book is unusual in transcending the distinction between socio-economic rights and civil and political rights. Part II applies these cross-cutting themes to comparing human rights law in the US, UK, South Africa, Canada, and India. Its focus is on seven particularly challenging issues: the death penalty, abortion, housing, health, speech, education and religion, with the aim of inspiring further comparative examination of other pressing human rights issues.