Hanging in the Balance: The Function of Justification in Achieving Women’s Equality

This book gives the first in-depth assessment of how justification functions when women are claiming their right to equality. How can courts assess whether a proposed limit to women’s equality is constitutionally justified? This question is rarely explicitly asked, with the assumption that well-established limitation frameworks, such as proportionality, are able to assess whether limits to women’s rights are justified. However, delving into the theory and practice of justification reveals fracture points between the dominant approach to justification and women’s rights to equality. One of its distinctive characteristics is the question of whether any analytical entwining or unwinding of equality and justification enhances the protection of women’s rights to equality in constitutional democracies. It proposes a novel asymmetric relationship between equality and justification that requires innovative methodological approaches that enrich the task of adjudicating limits to women’s equality. This is an intriguing, articulate and compelling examination of a question with real and applied significance to all those working on human rights and equality.