oxford law - the faculty and its members : sandra fredman

Sandra Fredman is Professor of Law at Oxford University, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

She has written and published widely on anti-discrimination law, human rights law and labour law, including include three monographs: Human Rights Transformed (OUP 2008); Discrimination Law (OUP 2002); and Women and the Law (OUP 1997), Discrimination Law as well as two co-authored books: The State as Employer (Mansell, 1988), with Gillian Morris, and Labour Law and Industrial Relations in Great Britain (2nd ed Kluwer, 1992) with Bob Hepple. She has also edited several books: Discrimination and Human Rights: The case of racism (OUP,2001); and Age as an Equality Issue (Hart, 2003) with Sarah Spencer; and has written numerous articles in peer-reviewed law journals.

She was awarded a three year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship in 2004 to further her research into socio-economic rights and substantive equality. She is South African and holds degrees from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford.. She has acted as an expert adviser on equality law and labour legislation in the EU, Northern Ireland, the UK and Canada; and is a barrister practising at Old Square Chambers.

S Fredman, Human Rights Transformed: Positive Rights and Positive Duties (Oxford University Press 2008)

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272761.001.0001

Abstract: Human Rights have traditionally been understood as protecting individual freedom against intrusion by the State. This book argues that human rights are based on a far richer view of freedom, going beyond absence of coercion and focussing on the ability to exercise such freedom. This view means that, as well as restraining the State, human rights require the State to act positively to remove barriers and facilitate the exercise of freedom. But because positive duties have for so long been regarded as a question of policy or aspiration, little sustained attention has been given to their role in actualising human rights. The book moves beyond the artificial boundary between socio-economic and civil and political rights and instead focuses on the positive duties to which all human rights give rise. It draws on political theory and social policy to illuminate important legal issues, and uses comparative material from India, South Africa, Canada, the US, the ECHR and the UK.

S Fredman, 'From Deference to Democracy: the Role of Equality under the Human Rights Act 1998' (2006) 122(Jan) Law Quarterly Review 53-81

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0386.2006.00306.x

ISBN: 1468-0386

S Fredman, 'Human Rights Transformed: Positive Duties and Positive Rights' (2006) 2006(Autumn) Public Law 498-520

S Fredman, 'Recognition or Redistribution: Reconciling Inequalities' (2007) 23 South African Journal of Human Rights 214-234

Abstract: This paper examines the traditional dichotomy between measures addressing socio-economic inequalities and those aimed at inequality based on status, such as race, gender, disability or sexual orientation. Using the conceptual framework of recognition and redistribution developed by Nancy Fraser and others, I argue that it is no longer tenable to keep the two spheres separate. Constructing a concept of socio-economic equality without considering the implications for status-based inequality can be damaging and ineffective. Conversely, status-based measures are limited by their inability to mobilise the redistributive measures necessary to make real equality of opportunity and genuine choice possible. The paper begins by examining the interaction between socio-economic and status-based equality. I then sketch out a multi-dimensional notion of substantive equality which attempts to create a synthesis between the aims of both spheres. In the final part, I make some very tentative suggestions as to how the interpenetration can be more meaningfully captured in legal frameworks.