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JUSTIFYING ANTISUBORDINATION

JUSTIFYING ANTISUBORDINATION Q1 AMERICAN JOURNAL of LAW and EQUALITY Anthony Sangiuliano* The “antisubordination” interpretation of antidiscrimination law holds that the law’s pur- pose is to reduce caste-like hierarchies of social status between social groups. In this article, I argue against the dominant “non-welfarist” view of the moral justification for this goal. This view holds that inequalities of social status are objectionable not just because they set back the well-being of members of socially subordinate groups but also because they are inconsistent with a duty to respect others’ special moral status, such as their status as equals. I defend a fully “welfarist” view, which holds that social status hierarchies are bad solely because they harm members of groups with inferior status by setting back their interest in secured social bases of self-respect. I go on to respond to the objection that the welfarist view of antisubordination cannot properly explain why the law symmetrically protects members of both privileged and subordinate social groups from discriminatory conduct. INTRODUCTION In Mandla v. Dowell-Lee, the UK House of Lords decided that the Park Grove School’s uni- form policy unjustifiably discriminated against Gurdiner Singh, a Sikh boy, because of his “ethnic origin,” in violation of Britain’s Race http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Law and Equality MIT Press

JUSTIFYING ANTISUBORDINATION

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References (13)

Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2023 Anthony Sangiuliano. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).
eISSN
2694-5711
DOI
10.1162/ajle_a_00053
Publisher site
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Abstract

Q1 AMERICAN JOURNAL of LAW and EQUALITY Anthony Sangiuliano* The “antisubordination” interpretation of antidiscrimination law holds that the law’s pur- pose is to reduce caste-like hierarchies of social status between social groups. In this article, I argue against the dominant “non-welfarist” view of the moral justification for this goal. This view holds that inequalities of social status are objectionable not just because they set back the well-being of members of socially subordinate groups but also because they are inconsistent with a duty to respect others’ special moral status, such as their status as equals. I defend a fully “welfarist” view, which holds that social status hierarchies are bad solely because they harm members of groups with inferior status by setting back their interest in secured social bases of self-respect. I go on to respond to the objection that the welfarist view of antisubordination cannot properly explain why the law symmetrically protects members of both privileged and subordinate social groups from discriminatory conduct. INTRODUCTION In Mandla v. Dowell-Lee, the UK House of Lords decided that the Park Grove School’s uni- form policy unjustifiably discriminated against Gurdiner Singh, a Sikh boy, because of his “ethnic origin,” in violation of Britain’s Race

Journal

American Journal of Law and Equality – MIT Press

Published: Sep 15, 2023

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