Does Discrimination Require Disadvantage?

The Age of Human Rights Journal, 2014

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.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2006

The most blatant forms of discrimination are morally outrageous and very obviously so; but the nature and boundaries of discrimination are more controversial, and it is not clear whether all forms of discrimination are morally bad; nor is it clear why objectionable cases of discrimination are bad. In this paper I address these issues. FirstAfter making some methodological observations, I offer a taxonomy of discrimination. I then argue that discrimination is bad, when it is, because it harms people. Finally, I criticize a rival, disrespect-based account according to which discrimination is bad regardless of whether it causes harm.

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.

Moral Philosophy and Politics, 2015

I conclude from this fine collection that if the wrong of discrimination is, as I now believe, a matter of its quite contingent consequences, then there is really nothing distinctive about wrongful discrimination. Because we tend to think that there is, and if that thought persists despite the failure of the alternative theories on offer, it will mean that we are more certain of the wrongfulness of ðsomeÞ discrimination than we are of the reason it is wrongful. But read this anthology ðand the Lippert-Rasmussen monographÞ and draw your own conclusions.

IMISCOE Research Series, 2021

This chapter gives an overview of some of the key concepts in the field of discrimination. It starts by distinguishing between direct and indirect discrimination in legal definitions. Next, we define the interrelated concepts of multiple discrimination and intersectionality, which increasingly are used in both legal studies and the social sciences, before giving an account of the interrelated concepts of organizational, institutional, and systemic discrimination. The chapter ends by reflecting on the complex relationship between discrimination and the endurance of categorical inequalities in societies where all members formally enjoy the principle of equality.

This article tries to define what discrimination is and to understand in particular detail its most important instances: those in which the satisfaction of interests is at stake. These cases of discrimination will be characterized in terms of deprivations of benefits. In order to describe and classify them we need to consider three different factors: the benefits of which discriminatees are deprived, the criteria according to which such benefits are denied or granted, and the justification that such deprivation of benefits may have (or lack). This definition intends to present discrimination as a concept that may be useful not only to examine certain social phenomena, but also, more widely, to ethical theory in general.

2005

Discrimination is a moral and a legal issue. It is regulated in national and international law. The rationale for regulation is the assumption that discrimination is unfair; the legal issue presupposes the moral one. If discrimination does not measure up as a moral concept, the legal regulation is not a regulation of “it” but of an ad hoc set of behaviors that we dislike, possibly for good reason. I start by trying to identify what discrimination is taken to be in the moral and legal discourse. I will go on to set up a number of requirements an account of discrimination should meet and assess what I understand to be the standard view in light of these requirements. Pinning discrimination down as a legal issue in need of regulation makes it more difficult to account for it in a meaningful way as a moral issue. There seems to be a conflict between these two concerns. I will end by spelling that conflict out.

2011

Abstract We defend the use of asymmetric norms which grant greater privileges to minorities than to majorities. The norms we discuss include norms facilitating the establishment or prohibition of minority-only or majority-only institutions, neighborhoods, or associations. While traditionally the primary arguments favoring minorities' privileges have been based on considerations of fairness or justice, we show that there are simple environments where asymmetric norms maximize aggregate sum of individual utilities.

Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 2019

This article argues that anti-discrimination rights are individual rights to be free from wrongful treatment and do not directly advance group-based interests or prohibit group-based harm. In light of this, a number of recurring accounts of the wrong of discrimination, particularly the wrong of indirect discrimination, are unsustainable. Claims that indirect discrimination is concerned with harm that is done to social groups or that laws prohibiting indirect discrimination seek to reduce or eliminate advantage gaps between social groups must be rejected as inaccurate. While principles of non-discrimination and principles of affirmative action often operate harmoniously to foster respect for the moral equality of persons, they each have a general affinity with distinct ethical traditions: deontology and teleology respectively. As such, we should conclude that indirect discrimination provisions are examples of formal and not substantive equality. Where rights to non-discrimination con...