Equality: Current and future directions of travel
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Author | Colm O’Cinneide |
| DOI | 10.1177/1358229116647899 |
| Subject Matter | Foreword |
Foreword
Equality: Current
and future directions
of travel
Colm O’Cinneide
I am honoured to have been asked to write the foreword to this special edition of the
International Journal of Discrimination and the Law. As the editorial notes, this collec-
tion of papers emerged out of a conference on the theme of The Equality Act 2010: Five
Years On organized in June 2015 as a collaboration between the Forum for Research into
Equality and Diversity (University of Chester) and the School of Law and Social Justice
(University of Liverpool). It was a pleasure to participate in this event: the standard of
papers was uniformly excellent and thought-provoking, as evidenced by the high quality
of those which have been included in this special edition. Furthermore, the conference
offered an invaluable opportunity to reflect on the Equality Act 2010 from the vantage
point of half a decade after its enactment and to consider how UK equality law might
develop in the years to come.
Along with Professor Bob Hepple QC, I was asked to contribute a keynote address at
the conference. My talk focused on how British law in this context might evolve in the
future, and the challenges it would face in this regard. I made the following points,
reproduced here in summary form by way of a preamble to the papers that follow.
The 2010 Act can, if perhaps a little controversially, be described as a quasi-
constitutional statute. It sets out to regulate the behaviour of both private and public
actors, with a view to protecting what is now regarded as a fundamental human right,
namely the right to non-discrimination – meaning that in effect it has become an impor-
tant element of the current set of norms that shape the fundamentals of the UK legal
system(s). Furthermore, the provisions of the 2010 Act are backstopped by the require-
ments of EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as elements of
the common law. They also attract support from across the political mainstream, and
Faculty of Laws, University College London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Colm O’Cinneide, Faculty of Laws, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Email: Nuno.Ferreira@liverpool.ac.uk
International Journalof
Discrimination and theLaw
2016, Vol. 16(2-3) NP1–NP3
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1358229116647899
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