Legal concepts and provisions regarding equality of opportunity

Equality guarantees are a central element of the contemporary national, supra-national and international architecture of legal systems. At the same time, the concept of legal equality faces profound challenges, both in theory and in practice. Influential theoretical approaches contest the content of the concept of equality. In the political sphere, parties with an anti-egalitarian agenda have gained considerable influence in Europe and beyond. Against this background, this project aims to continue the work of the first funding period with a view to restating the normative principles and fundamental legal concepts underlying current equality guarantees as foundational elements of a just society. It will, however, broaden its international research focus and include new perspectives, in particular the highly relevant area of criminal law. This long-term–and because of its normative ambition–high- risk project continues to include theoretical, doctrinal, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspectives. It will link legal equality guarantees, their current development and the challenges they face to features of economic and social change in contemporary societies studied in other pillars of the URPP. Is the current understanding of legal equality guarantees up to the challenges ahead? Particular areas of research will include four (interrelated) clusters: (i) International law and the problem of global inequality, including human rights law and legal responses to climate change; (ii) The legal theory of equality, including the normative theory of intergenerational justice and the critique of anti-egalitarianism in theory and law; (iii) Equality and the law and culture of democracy, including challenges presented by AI and the function of criminal law for protecting democracy; (iv) Equality and the criminal justice system, including the shaping of crime and punishment by inequality of opportunity; unequal access to justice and legal duties on states to protect equality by criminal law. The researchers will work on these questions together to profit from their respective background and expertise.

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