Bibliographic record
Abstract
Section 15 of the Canadian Charter provides a constitutional right to equality. But the Supreme Court of Canada has interpreted this right restrictively. Today, the Constitution fails to protect certain individuals and groups against obvious forms of direct and indirect discrimination. This article argues that s. 15 of the Charter is interpreted narrowly in three respects and advances proposals to expand the right to equality. First, the right to equality framework fails to protect marginalized persons and groups against direct discrimination. Second, courts overlook how individuals can suffer discrimination based on quasi-immutable traits, which are personal characteristics that are relatively stable and difficult to change. Third, s. 15 of the Charter is largely absent from areas of the law where discrimination is widespread, such as criminal law and procedure. This article offers a more expansive right to equality framework that addresses these limitations. In doing so, it deepens our understanding of discrimination based on different personal traits, distinguishes their respective normative significance, and offers an account of their different psychological harms. It also explains why the right to equality can call the State to account for discrimination—and require the State to justify disparate treatment—in ways that other constitutional rights cannot. Ultimately, this article offers a path forward to broaden the right to equality in order to counteract unconstitutional discrimination more effectively.\nL’article 15 de la Charte canadienne prévoit un droit constitutionnel à l’égalité. Mais la Cour suprême du Canada a interprété ce droit de manière restrictive. Aujourd’hui, la Constitution ne protège pas certaines personnes et certains groupes contre des formes évidentes de discrimination directe et indirecte. Dans le présent article, je soutiens que l’article 15 de la Charte est interprété de manière restrictive à trois égards et j’avance des propositions pour élargir le droit à l’égalité. Premièrement, le cadre du droit à l’égalité ne protège pas les personnes et les groupes marginalisés contre la discrimination directe. Deuxièmement, les tribunaux négligent la façon dont les individus peuvent subir une discrimination fondée sur des traits quasi-immuables, qui sont des caractéristiques personnelles relativement stables et difficiles à modifier. Troisièmement, l’article 15 de la Charte est largement absent des domaines du droit où la discrimination est répandue, tels que le droit pénal et la procédure pénale. Dans cet article, je propose un cadre plus large pour le droit à l’égalité qui tient compte de ces limites. Ce faisant, j’approfondis notre compréhension de la discrimination fondée sur différents traits personnels, je distingue leur signification normative respective et rend compte de leurs différents préjudices psychologiques. J’explique également pourquoi le droit à l’égalité peut demander à l’État de rendre compte de la discrimination—et exiger de l’État qu’il justifie la disparité de traitement—d’une manière qui n’est pas possible pour d’autres droits protégés par la constitution. Enfin, je propose une voie à suivre pour élargir le droit à l’égalité afin de contrecarrer l’inconstitutionnalité du droit à l’égalité.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.018 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.062 | 0.010 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".