Of Pigeonholes and Principles: A Reconsideration of Discrimination Law
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The common law has never developed a cause of action for discrimination. Instead, the legislatures have stepped in. This article explores not whether there should be a cause of action for discrimination at common law, but whether our thinking about discrimination from a legal point of view would benefit from drawing upon common law methodology. We can contrast two methodologies for the design and development over time of legal norms: the top-down model of the comprehensive code designed to bring to life a grand theory about the norms regulating human interaction, and the bottom-up model of case-by-case analysis aiming toward the development of a set of principles explaining and justifying individual decisions. Each has its place, but the latter is perhaps better suited to creating and changing norms in the discrimination law area. However, the abdication of responsibility by the common law has led to the legislatures intervening in their typical topdown style. Lacking a grand theory, the resulting statutory rules have something of the quality of arbitrary pigeonholes into which complainants must fit their fact situation or fail. Three issues are examined, revealing the detrimental impact of the pigeonhole-like quality that current codes have taken on over the course of their development. The first two concern the difficulties encountered in determining which attributes come within the protection of the law through being designated as prohibited grounds of discrimination; the last is a reexamination of whether discrimination is confined to differential treatment motivated by prejudice or encompasses causing adverse effects upon vulnerable groups and individuals. The article makes some first steps towards showing how discrimination law could develop differently if we were to adopt something more like the common law method of norm creation and change. This article is available in Osgoode Hall Law Journal: http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol40/iss2/1 OF PIGEONHOLES AND PRINCIPLES: A RECONSIDERATION OF DISCRIMINATION LAW© BY DENISE G. R]tAUME The common law has never developed a cause of action for discrimination. Instead, the legislatures have stepped in. This article explores not whether there should be a cause of action for discrimination at common law, but whether our thinking about discrimination from a legal point of view would benefit from drawing upon common law methodology. We can contrast two methodologies for the design and development over time of legal norms: the top-down model of the comprehensive code designed to bring to life a grand theory about the norms regulating human interaction, and the bottom-up model of case-by-case analysis aiming toward the development of a set of principles explaining and justifying individual decisions. Each has its place, but the latter is perhaps better suited to creating and changing norms in the discrimination law area. However, the abdication of responsibility by the common law has led to the legislatures intervening in their typical top-down style. Lacking a grand theory, the resulting statutory rules have something of the quality of arbitrary pigeonholes into which complainants must fit their fact situation or fail. Three issues are examined, revealing the detrimental impact of the pigeonhole-like quality that current codes have taken on over the course of their development. The first two concern the difficulties encountered in determiningwhich attributes come within the protection of the law through being designated as prohibited grounds of discrimination; the last is a re-examination of whether discrimination is confined to differential treatment motivated by prejudice or encompasses causing adverse effects upon vulnerable groups and individuals. The article makes some first steps towards showing how discrimination law could develop differently if we were to adopt something more like the common law method of norm creation and change. Puisque la discrimination ne donne pas naissance A une cause d'action en common law, il a fallu que les Assembl6es I6gislatives s'interposent. Dans cet article, s'interroge si notre faqon de voir Ia discrimination, d'un point de vue juridique, pourrait b6n6ficier d'une m6thodologie illumin6e par la common law. On peut faire le contraste entre deux m6thodologies utilis6es pour la conception et le d6veloppement des normes juridiques: soit le module haut en bas (top down) du code d6taill6, conqu pour m~rir une th6orie globale de normes qui prescrivent le comportement humain, et le modle ascendant (bottom up) qui analyse les cas avec le but d'6noncer des principes pouvant expliquer et justifier des d6cisions particuli~res. Chaque module a sa place, mais le deuxi~me module se pr&te peut-6tre mieux h la cr6ation et A la modification des normes dans le domaine de Ia discrimination. Toutefois, l'abdication de la responsabilitd par la common law a suscitd le fonctionnement du modle du haut en has par les Assembl6es 16gislatives. Faute d'une th~orie globale, les r~gles l6gislatives ont reffet de cr6er des categories arbitraires dans lesquelles les densandeurs et demanderesses doivent classifier leur situation individuelle ou prendre le risque d'6chouer. On comprend 'impact pr6judiciable de ces categories qui caract6risent les codes par le biais de trois questions pos&es par l'auteure. Les deux premires questions se rapportent i la difficult6 h d6terminer quels attributs font I'objet de la protection de la loi en raison de leur d6signation de motif de discrimination illicite. Finalement, 'auteure se demande si la discrimination est limit6e au traitement diff6rentiel motiv6 par le pr6judice ou si la discrimination doit avoir des cons6quences pr6judiciables sur les groupes et les individus vuln6rables. Cet article fait les premiers pas dans une rh6torique qui sugg~re que les lois en iatire de discrimination pourraient se d6velopper de fagon tr~s diff6rente si l'on utlisait une m6thodologie puis6e de [a
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".