Engineering Equality An Essay on European Anti-Discrimination Law

In an age of widespread cutbacks on social spending, the prospects of social policy generally appear to be grim. If noticeable progress has been recently made in the European Union, then it is in regard to rooting out discrimination. Indeed, anti-discrimination law and policy appears to be the one sphere of social policy whose success is causally connected to the European Union. But how successful can anti-discrimination law be? This book uses legal analysis in order to expose the intrinsic shortcomings of common approaches. Anti-discrimination law fails to provide adequate legal guidance and therefore invites constant supplementation by pedagogical projects of social engineering. This book offers a genuinely leftist critique on anti-discrimination law, and concludes with a discussion of alternative models of solidarity in the Union.

Alexander Somek holds the Charles E. Floete Chair in Law at the University of Iowa. Prior to joining the faculty in 2003, he was Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Vienna. He has previously published Individualism: An Essay on the Authority of the European Union with OUP (2009).