Overview
- Helps resolve ongoing debates about the inconsistencies between freedom goals and equality in advancing social justice
- Explains how recent social justice debates have shaped the regulation of racial discrimination in employment
- Reasserts the importance of individual liberty in framing antidiscrimination law and promoting wider participation
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism (PASTCL)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
- Intersection Between Equality Law and Fairness in Employment
- Juridical Roots of Individual Liberty
- Individual Liberty and Fair Process in Employment Disputes
- Iindividual liberty in framing antidiscrimination law
- Historical antecedents of antidiscrimination legislation
- Freedom of Association in Employment Law
- Judicial interpretations in race discrimination cases
- New Understanding of Anti-Discrimination Law
About this book
This book analyses the egalitarian foundations of equality law from a classical liberal perspective by asking two central questions: does justice ideally demand equality? Are differences in abilities among people in some sense unfair? The book examines these questions in the context of racial diversity.
Racial justice as a component of social justice is often considered to be so emotionally and morally compelling that its implications for economic freedom are rarely subjected to critical scrutiny. In defending the classical ideal of formal equality in contexts of racial diversity this book questions the ethical status of egalitarian social and moral ideals. Economic Freedom and Social Justice argues that egalitarian ideals, like all subjective value judgements, must be subjected to critical intellectual inquiry rather than treated axiomatically. Drawing upon the legal framework in the UK and other common law jurisdictions, this book shows some of the ways in which egalitarian ideals, in addition to resting on false premises, are costly, harmful, and ultimately inimical to justice and liberty. The book argues that legal entitlements and policy guidelines constructed upon notions of racial equity are wrongly constituted as the main prism through which liberal market democracies govern private relationships, including the employment relationship.
Written in a clear and forthright style, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in law, economics, philosophy and political economy.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Wanjiru Njoya is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Law School, UK and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. She has previously taught law at St John’s College, Oxford, the London School of Economics, and Queen’s University, Canada. She has published widely in the field of employment law and labour regulation, most recently in the King’s Law Journal, the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy, and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Dr Njoya is a graduate of the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and a former Rhodes Scholar (St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, 1998). Her doctoral research on the conceptual framework of the employment relationship is published under the title Property in Work: the Employment Relationship in the Anglo-American Firm. She lives in East Devon, England.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Economic Freedom and Social Justice
Book Subtitle: The Classical Ideal of Equality in Contexts of Racial Diversity
Authors: Wanjiru Njoya
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84852-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-84851-4Published: 02 November 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-84854-5Published: 03 November 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-84852-1Published: 01 November 2021
Series ISSN: 2662-6470
Series E-ISSN: 2662-6489
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 267
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Heterodox Economics, Law and Economics, Social Justice, Equality and Human Rights