Equality before the Law in UK Law

If this prerequisite is satisfied, the essential question for the court is whether the alleged discrimination, that is, the difference in treatment of which complaint is made, can withstand scrutiny. There may be such an obvious, relevant difference between the claimant and those with whom he seeks to compare himself that their situations cannot be regarded as analogous.

(1) The situations must be comparable, analogous, or broadly similar, but need not be identical. Any differences between them must be material to the difference in treatment.

Secondly, it is clear that the court's approach to an issue of proportionality under the Convention must go beyond that traditionally adopted to judicial review in a domestic setting. The domestic court must now make a value judgment, an evaluation, by reference to the circumstances prevailing at the relevant time ( Wilson v First County Trust Ltd (No 2) [2003] UKHL 40, [2004] 1 AC 816, paras 62-67).

It is the clear purpose of section 71 to require public bodies to whom that provision applies to give advance consideration to issues of race discrimination before making any policy decision that may be affected by them. This is a salutary requirement, and this provision must be seen as an integral and important part of the mechanisms for ensuring the fulfilment of the aims of anti-discrimination legislation.

In our judgment, whether the question is considered in Wednesbury terms, or on an application of a free-standing principle that like cases should be treated alike unless there is a valid reason for treating them differently, the complaint in the present case must be rejected. We have already given our reasons for concluding that the decision to exclude those who did not satisfy the birth criteria was not unreasonable in the Wednesbury sense.

The conditions which appear to me to be essential are these: — (1) a long shared history, of which the group is conscious as distinguishing it from other groups, and the memory of which it keeps alive; (2) a cultural tradition of its own, including family and social customs and manners, often but not necessarily associated with religious observance.

Initially, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948) was not viewed as creating legal duties.