Discrimination Law

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.

Sandra Fredman FBA KC, Professor of the Laws of the British Commonwealth and the United States, University of Oxford

Sandra Fredman is Professor of the Laws of the British Commonwealth and the USA at the University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, King's Council (honoris causa), and Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub. She has published widely and has numerous peer-reviewed publications on equality, labour law, and human rights. She has been an expert advisor on equality for a variety of governments and organizations, and her framework on substantive equality has been used by apex courts in several jurisdictions, as well as by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UN Women and the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education.