Category Archives: Discrimination
‘Open consultation: Make Work Pay: misuse of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)’
The government has introduced a measure through the Employment Rights Act 2025 which voids any provision in an agreement (such as a contract of employment or settlement agreement) between a worker and their employer that prevents a worker from speaking out about relevant harassment or discrimination. This consultation is seeking views on proposals regarding: (i) the […]
Jo Helme, ‘Do Unpaid Internships Breach Equality Law?’
ABSTRACT One of the pervasive legal questions surrounding unpaid internships is whether they are compliant with equality law. This speculation, however, has not yet faced judicial determination. This article analyses the merits of such a claim, focusing specifically on whether the EU recommendation that permits unpaid internships can be regarded as ‘invalid’ for discriminating based […]
Melissa Wasserman, ‘Products Liability in a World Designed for Men’
ABSTRACT Automobile crashes are a routine feature of modern life, yet their consequences are not evenly distributed. Women driving most vehicles face substantially higher risks of serious injury and death than men in comparable crashes – a disparity linked to safety systems designed and tested around male bodies. Across a wide range of consumer products […]
Elizabeth Rosenblatt, ‘Copyright’s One-Way Racial Appropriation Ratchet’
ABSTRACT This Article explores the implicit hierarchies inherent in copyright law, with particular attention to ways in which US copyright statutes and judicial opinions incorporate racial bias into those hierarchies. By devaluing the inherently dialogic and incremental nature of meaningmaking, current copyright law tends to create and perpetuate a fiction of ‘pure originality’ that disproportionately […]
Frances Hamilton, ‘The Formation, Progress and Legacy of the Committee on the Employment of Married Women in the 1920s’
ABSTRACT Marriage bars were re-established by many employers following the end of the First World War. The 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act proved to be of no assistance as a restrictive interpretation meant that it did not prevent gender discrimination. Contemporaneous materials suggested that the re-imposition of marriage bars was meekly accepted by women. Other […]
Hiller and Sewell, ‘Presumptions of AI Malfunction: A Judicial Response to AI Harms’
ABSTRACT In stark contrast to the recently revoked federal policy meant to incentivize the adoption of safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems, the July 2025 Winning the Race, America’s AI Action Plan succinctly summarizes its approach as ‘Build, Baby, Build!’. Public discourse, as well, vacillates between artificial intelligence (AI) as a savior or an […]
Tom Kohavi, ‘Discrimination Law as Private Law’
INTRODUCTION In a series of decisions, the Supreme Court subjected the interpretation and application of discrimination law to basic tort law principles. These tortification cases have strengthened broader concerns that the judicial approach to rights against private forms of discrimination tends to be rigid and defendant-friendly, thereby diminishing the regulatory impact of discrimination law (and […]
Margaret Thornton, ‘Privatising Sexual Harassment’
ABSTRACT Following the emergence of #MeToo, sexual harassment at work attracted sustained attention all over the world. In Australia, this resulted in multiple reports which confirmed high rates of sexual harassment and led to protracted agitation for law reform. Although the ensuing recommendations have been widely praised, this article argues that the continuing privatisation of […]
Jane Thomson, ‘“And Two Cows to my Wife … so Long as she Remains my Widow”: Public Policy and Testamentary Marriage Clauses in Canada’
ABSTRACT This article, part one of a two part project, provides a comprehensive review of the law surrounding marriage conditions in wills in Canada, including the civil law jurisdiction of Quebec, through a quantitative study of nearly every electronically reported Canadian decision involving a marriage clause in a will. It begins with an overview of […]
Brittany Farr, ‘The Race Case in Contracts’
ABSTRACT This Article develops a new framework for thinking about the place of race in Contracts. It argues that culture and context work in tandem in the form of ‘cultural scripts’ to weave racial associations into texts where race is not explicitly identified. This suggests that the impact and influence of race in Contracts might […]