Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
Social hierarchies based upon traits such as gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability currently affect people’s access to many basic goods – for instance, housing, medical care, education, and secure and meaningful employment. Such hierarchies also affect people’s ability to exercise their basic legal and political rights, such as the right to legal counsel and the right to vote. In recent years, discrimination theorists have looked to domestic antidiscrimination laws as one way of combatting these severe and pervasive social hierarchies. They have argued that rather than seeing the purpose of antidiscrimination laws narrowly, as that of ferreting out illicit prejudices in certain cases, we should see their purpose more expansively, as tools in the struggle for a society that is not structured by such pervasive hierarchies …

Sophia Moreau, Beyond Discrimination Law: Realizing Equality Through Other Laws, Such as Tort Law, (2024) 4 American Journal of Law and Equality 427–461 (15 September 2024).