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Neelabh Bist - 4th April 2020
A High Court in India recently handed down a significant judgment relating to equality in educational facilities. The case involved a practice regularly carried out in Indian schools, where children are classified into different sections on the basis of marks secured in the previous examinations. The Court held this method of intellectual segregation as a […]
- 1st April 2020
On 31 March 2020, The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 came into force. This is a landmark for the protection of reproductive rights in Northern Ireland. This blog provides a brief overview of the regulations and highlights some areas of on-going concern. On 22 October 2019, Westminster voted through, by a majority of 327 to […]
Alex Benn and Cormac Devlin - 22nd March 2020
In Forstater v CGD (2019), a think tank did not renew its contract for consultancy services with the claimant, Maya Forstater, allegedly because of Forstater expressing so-called ‘gender critical’ beliefs. Forstater claimed that she had suffered direct discrimination for having a protected belief under section 10 of the Equality Act 2010. In a preliminary decision, […]
Isis Conceicao - 9th March 2020
In February 2020, Brazil witnessed two judicial decisions that indicate backlash efforts against race informed affirmative action policy. In one case, the Superior Court of Justice, the highest appellate court in Brazil for non-constitutional questions of federal law, decided that Sergio Camargo, nominated on 27 November 2019 as president of the Fundação Cultural Palmares (Palmares […]
Oxford Living Wage Campaign - 6th March 2020
Last week, the University of Oxford announced its commitment to pay the Oxford Living Wage (OLW) to all of its employees starting August 1, 2020. Currently set at £10.21/hr, the OLW is set by the local city council to reflect the relatively higher cost of living in Oxford, one of the UK’s most unaffordable cities. […]
Marie Tidball - 6th March 2020
March 8th marks International Women’s Day – a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This year, the theme calls for collective action in accelerating women’s equality; action urgently needed to improve access to gynaecological, obstetric, maternity and post-natal care pathways for mothers with disabilities, something I experienced first-hand as […]
Frances Raday - 6th March 2020
Women’s rights seemed simple 72 years ago, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, under the visionary leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, launched an international regime which outlawed sex discrimination and required states to ensure the equal rights of men and women. A Kuhnian shift of perception for humanity and a paradigm change for political philosophers […]
Carolin Ott - 27th February 2020
In R (TP, AR & SXC) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2020] EWCA Civ 37, the Court of Appeal dismissed appeals by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (“SSWP”) against two judgments of the Administrative Court concerning implementation arrangements for the Government’s flagship benefits system, Universal Credit (“UC”). The Court […]
Timothy Jacob-Owens - 18th February 2020
Following the collapse of the power-sharing coalition led by the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin, Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government for a little over three years. One of the key points of contention in the subsequent negotiations has reportedly been the issue of legal protection for the Irish language. On 10th […]
Adaena Sinclair-Blakemore - 17th February 2020
On 11 February 2020, the High Court of Australia (HCA) delivered a landmark judgment in which it ruled that indigenous Australians cannot be considered “aliens” under the Australian Constitution and therefore cannot be deported. The judgment is significant because it marks the first time that the HCA has considered whether non-citizens of Australia, who nevertheless […]
Stephanos Stavros - 27th January 2020
On 14 January 2019, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in Beizaras and Levickas v Lithuania, as a result of the Lithuanian authorities’ failure to prosecute homophobic speech targeting two young men (the applicants) who “had kissed on the Internet”. The kiss – a […]
Saeed Bagheri - 20th January 2020
As a matter of human rights, everybody has a right to education in their mother language as the basis for sustained success; however, the Iranian minorities, particularly the Turkic minorities (the largest ethnic minority group of about 30 million in Iran), have been denied the right to education in their mother language over the past […]