Explaining paradigm shifts in Danish anti-discrimination law

Abstract

The past three decades have witnessed dramatic transformations in Danish anti-discrimination law. Multiple methodologies—from semi-structured interviews and contemporary newspaper articles to empirical analyses of new datasets—are employed to elucidate how and why these shifts occurred. The analysis focuses on the agency of a small group of well-funded and sophisticated legal actors, who first harnessed the power of the preliminary reference procedure to advance gender discrimination claims in the 1980s and 1990s. This strategy was repeated—successfully—when Denmark adopted disability rights legislation for the first time in the 2000s. The present article builds—and offers a fresh perspective—on existing literature that investigates where, why and how Member State courts engage with EU law and the preliminary reference procedure.