The influence of ‘Context and interpretation in anti-discrimination law’ by Beth J Gaze, Melbourne University Law Review, 2002

The twentieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act marked the end of an era of uncertain progress. Despite dramatic victories in constitutional litigation and the visibility of group-based struggles, civil rights strategies had limited success in initiating major economic and social change.' The limited progress has prompted a new sense of realism among groups who experience discrimination-a sense of how little the situation has changed even though overt prejudice may be less prevalent. The modest progress of the civil rights movement has not made "rights-focused" struggles unattractive, however; in fact, there is a proliferation of civil rights strategies

The Autonomy Defense of Private Discrimination

This report analyses and compares European Union (EU) law, with a focus on the Employment Equality Directive and related case law, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in the wider context of international human rights law, to establish how they address disability equality and non-discrimination. The report identifies particular areas where the approaches of the UN and the EU to disability equality and non-discrimination law are compatible, and it also identifies the areas where compatibility appears to be lacking.

Sex Discrimination Law vs. Civil Liberties

A central trend in the development of discrimination law, in every jurisdiction, has been the movement from a requirement of intention to ground a complaint to the recognition as actionable of indirect or adverse effect discrimination. Initially, liability for discrimination was circumscribed very narrowly, requiring a form of intention that was tantamount to malice. The practical consequences of this narrow conception were apparent early on, and those concerned about them have long been agitating, with some success, for a reading or redrafting of anti-discrimination statutes that would yield broader liability. Advocacy (both practical and theoretical) in the discrimination law context has tended to swing wildly between two extremes -- from a virtually exclusive focus on the moral blameworthiness of the defendant to an attempt to focus solely on the effects of discrimination on its victims. This article seeks to reexamine the gradual expansion of liability in discrimination law from the perspective of the key conceptual elements of liability in tort law in order to reexamine the normative underpinnings of this area of law. Viewed from a tort perspective, the enlargement of the scope of discrimination law can best be understood as resulting from an implicit expansion of the concept of fault appropriate to this context of human interaction, a change linked to an expanding conception of the human interests that discrimination law protects from infringement. From its beginnings, discrimination law implicitly recognized that deliberately refusing to contract with others out of ill will or prejudice toward an important aspect of identity such as race or sex constituted an affront to human dignity that could not be justified by the value of freedom of contract. The expansion of liability over time reflects an expansion of the concept of human dignity bound up with fair access to important opportunities and due consideration of the needs and interests of differently situated groups in the design of important social institutions. This conception of dignity constructs it as an objective interest that can be affected by implicitly discriminatory behavior as well as by conduct motivated by prejudice, requiring more robust justification than the mere claim to liberty. This approach can explain many of the advances in modern discrimination law without resorting to end-state distributive principles.

Strained judicial interpretation of British discrimination law is not new; some of the leading House of Lords cases on the European Union law doctrine of Indirect Effect have concerned discrimination law. The interpretative obligation, to read national law in line with EU law, has seen words read in and like being treated with like according to changing mores. However, the disability discrimination case of EBR Attridge Law v Coleman [2010] I.C.R. 242 saw an entire sub-section being read in by an Employment Appeal Tribunal. This article briefly reviews the House of Lords’ approach in earlier cases, primarily through the prism of discrimination law, and then asks, following more recent Employment Appeal Tribunal cases concerning pregnancy discrimination and the protection from victimisation within the Equality Act 2010, whether the high-water mark for judicial re-writing has been reached in Britain and whether compliance with European law can better be attained in other ways.

Consumer centricity (C-C) in the Indian real estate sector has gained prominence since the introduction of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act in 2016. For a growing economy such as India's, with significant dependence on the construction industry to catalyze economic development, real estate consumerism is of vital importance to spearhead growth in the construction industry. This study critically examined the positioning of consumers in the Indian real estate sector over the years and to date in order to identify areas requiring interventions. Within the framework of the law, key factors defining and contributing to consumer centricity with regard to the delivery of real estate assets were identified. Various real estate sector–specific statutes were traced back along a timeline; they were assessed for the presence of the identified consumer-centric factors. The changes in legislative intent over time were coupled with timely judicial interpretations of laws in courts and regulatory forums. Lastly statutes of significance to real estate asset delivery were probed for inherent loopholes in their frameworks. The growing impetus to consumer centricity both in the making and interpretation of real estate laws was clearly established in the present study. However, existing laws of importance to real estate asset delivery were identified to be contributors to the creation and preservation of an inherent imbalance in the design and power structure of the sector, to the detriment of consumers of real estate assets. The findings undoubtedly indicate that to stimulate growth in the construction industry, the need of the hour is to place consumer centricity at the heart of affairs through the correction of inherent loopholes in the framework of law governing real estate asset delivery.

Religious Freedom Under the Victorian Charter of Rights

The use of categories such as „race“, “gender”, “disabled”, etc. has been regarded with some suspicion in the humanities for some time. In contrast to this unease, antidiscrimination law fundamentally relies on them to define prohibited discriminatory behavior. Wariness about the problems associated with categories have led several legal scholars to argue in favour of a move away from the categorical approach in the context of equality and antidiscrimination. This article analyses two such proposals: the “value-based approach” by Lauren Sudeall Lucas in a US legal context and the “post-categorical antidiscrimination law” by Susanne Baer et.al. in a German/European law context. I examine the merits and demerits of these proposals and contend that resorting to categories might be indispensable in a democratic system that subscribes to the principle of separation of powers. Moreover, the problems associated with the current categorical antidiscrimination law would not be solved but merely be relocated from the level of regulation to the level of application, thereby making discrimination even less visible. I argue instead that the pitfalls associated with categories can be avoided within a categorical system, if a broader understanding of the respective categories, based on a concept of recognition as proposed by Holzleithner, is adopted.

This paper examines the ambiguous relationship between feminism and the state through the lens of sex discrimination legislation. Particular attention will be paid to the changing nature of the state as manifested by its political trajectory from social liberalism to neoliberalism over the last few decades. As a creature of social liberalism, the passage of sex discrimination legislation was animated by notions of collective good and redistributive justice, but now that neoliberalism is in the ascendancy, we see a resiling from these values in favour of private good and promotion of the self through the market. This cluster of values associated with neoliberalism not only serves to reify the socially dominant strands of masculinity, it also goes hand-in-glove with neoconservatism, which is intent on restricting the inchoate freedoms of women. The erosion of social liberal measures has caused many feminists to feel more kindly disposed towards the liberal state. Some attempt to unravel the contradictions relating to feminism and the state with particular regard to the key discourses of equality of opportunity.

The holy trinity of American work law - employment discrimination, labor law, and employment law - has governed the American workplace for over four decades and is also firmly entrenched in the curricula of most law schools. But the discrete lenses provided by the conventional trinity make it difficult to bring into focus two distinct but related dimensions of the accelerating integration of American work law. Thus, we are on the one hand experiencing an accelerating doctrinal integration of our field, as the settings in which nominally out of area law plays a significant governance role are rapidly proliferating. At the same time, we are increasingly confronting a functional integration of work law, a development evident in the cross-migration of employment discrimination law and labor law, as the institutions central to each field - discrimination litigation and labor unions respectively - have increasingly assumed functions traditionally played by the other. Functional integration is apparent as well in the increasingly robust role of employment law in both employment discrimination and labor law contexts. Against the backdrop of these developments, our continued embrace of the conventional subject-matter division reflects and reinforces an increasingly false opposition between legal strategies that rely on workplace organizing and collective action (on the one hand) and those that rely on litigation and related institutional practices (on the other). More fundamentally, the conventional division reflects and reinforces an increasingly false opposition between the struggle for workplace democracy and the struggle for racial, gender, and other forms of justice in the workplace and beyond.

Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction explores four decades of anti-discrimination laws in Australia. Beth Gaze and Belinda Smith argue that effective laws protecting against and deterring discrimination are vital for a fair future, and emphasise the theoretical and social contexts that underpin this area of the law. The text is divided into three sections: the first addresses the social and conceptual context, history and framework of anti-discrimination laws; the second analyses the main elements of the law and the processes of enforcement; and the third explores broader avenues for pursuing equality beyond simply prohibiting discrimination. Written in a clear and concise style, Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction is a vital resource for students.

Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction explores four decades of anti-discrimination laws in Australia. Beth Gaze and Belinda Smith argue that effective laws protecting against and deterring discrimination are vital for a fair future, and emphasise the theoretical and social contexts that underpin this area of the law. The text is divided into three sections: the first addresses the social and conceptual context, history and framework of anti-discrimination laws; the second analyses the main elements of the law and the processes of enforcement; and the third explores broader avenues for pursuing equality beyond simply prohibiting discrimination. Written in a clear and concise style, Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction is a vital resource for students.

Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction explores four decades of anti-discrimination laws in Australia. Beth Gaze and Belinda Smith argue that effective laws protecting against and deterring discrimination are vital for a fair future, and emphasise the theoretical and social contexts that underpin this area of the law. The text is divided into three sections: the first addresses the social and conceptual context, history and framework of anti-discrimination laws; the second analyses the main elements of the law and the processes of enforcement; and the third explores broader avenues for pursuing equality beyond simply prohibiting discrimination. Written in a clear and concise style, Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction is a vital resource for students.

Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction explores four decades of anti-discrimination laws in Australia. Beth Gaze and Belinda Smith argue that effective laws protecting against and deterring discrimination are vital for a fair future, and emphasise the theoretical and social contexts that underpin this area of the law. The text is divided into three sections: the first addresses the social and conceptual context, history and framework of anti-discrimination laws; the second analyses the main elements of the law and the processes of enforcement; and the third explores broader avenues for pursuing equality beyond simply prohibiting discrimination. Written in a clear and concise style, Equality and Discrimination Law in Australia: An Introduction is a vital resource for students.