The Antidiscrimination Principle and the Determination of Disadvantage

Abstract

This paper examines some of the limits of antidiscrimination law in its present form, focusing on the major trends that underlie it from the perspective of legislation and case law. It reflects on the traditional principles of interpretation and the impediments to incorporating standards offering both justification and explanation in the test of equality; standards that might detect the patterns or social structures of discrimination and identify individuals with greater accuracy. To this end, it proposes to further develop the debate on indirect discrimination and material equality through additional interpretative criteria that originate in categories such as structural discrimination and the intersectionality of discrimination.