Substantive equality revisited: A rejoinder to Sandra Fredman

This is the last piece in a dialogue begun by Sandra Fredman with her article, Substantive Equality Revisited, to which I submitted a requested response, and to which she replied with a Rejoinder. Basically, Professor Fredman’s model, in itself, does not grasp how power works in discrimination, alth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of constitutional law 2017-11, Vol.15 (4), p.1174-1177
Main Author: MacKinnon, Catharine A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Discrimination
Dominance
Equality
Hierarchies
Inequality
Power
Subordination
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Summary:This is the last piece in a dialogue begun by Sandra Fredman with her article, Substantive Equality Revisited, to which I submitted a requested response, and to which she replied with a Rejoinder. Basically, Professor Fredman’s model, in itself, does not grasp how power works in discrimination, although she identifies power’s operation correctly in her examples. Inequality of power—at times direct, at times attenuated—is the fundamental dynamic of inequality. Intrinsically dynamic, it works through systematic domination and subordination on socially concrete grounds, that is, through, and creating, hierarchy. It is concrete, not abstract, so always grounded. Hierarchy on concrete grounds is what drives inequality, what makes it be unequal, therefore what identifies it.
ISSN:1474-2640
1474-2659
DOI:10.1093/icon/mox083