ABSTRACT This essay articulates both empirical and historical insights of a distributive analysis, which entails presenting a critical intervention in a legal field dominated by a mainstream scholarly or policy view that is both ideologically tainted and empirically inaccurate. The transition from distributive consequences to what critical scholars refer to as a distributive analysis is a strategic intervention within each specific legal field that ought to be historicised. This article shows how the application of a distributive analysis to two canonical case studies in consumer law and gender discrimination as two distinct and relatively marginal fields in European Union law developed through the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice. Finally, this article questions whether a distributive analysis, without a theoretical grounding in critical theory, is sufficient to ensure that it is not only an empirical tool but also committed to not perpetuating the existing inequalities within the liberal or neoliberal foundations of the European legal order.