The`compensation culture' has featured frequently in the popular press over the last decade. There have, however, been comparatively few academic studies and such studies as there have been have largely focused on personal injury claims. A compensation culture, if it exists, could extend much wider than that. This article compares the exponential increase in the use of the term`compensation culture' in the national printed media since 1995 with available statistics relating to the Queen's Bench, County Courts, and employment tribunals. Far from spiralling upwards, these statistics show a broad decline across a range of claims with the exception of claims before the employment tribunals, where the government has created a slew of new heads of claim. In order to counter the misconceptions founded by the popular media, and to allow for greater scrutiny, more attention should be paid to the collection and dissemination of judicial and claims statistics.

No abstract

The 'single' Equality Act 2010 was intended to unify and simplify British discrimination law which had grown up piecemeal over 40 years. However, a number of protections did not follow the standard model (as originally laid down in the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) and remained outside the unification process. Such grounds include Trade Union membership and the possession of whistleblower status and past criminal records. This difference has been significant in the government's reaction to the European Court of Human Rights' decision in Redfearn v UK regarding membership of political parties where the government opted to expand these 'other' protections rather than amend the Equality Act 2010. This article considers the role and status of these other discriminations which remain outside the Equality Act 2010 in light of the government's response to Redfearn.

Career opportunities in legal practice remain significantly gendered, raced and classed in many countries. In particular, features of the organisation and culture of law firms in an era of neoliberalism exemplify how patterns of disadvantage for women and minority ethnic lawyers are sustained. This paper introduces a special issue of papers on the ongoing challenges faced by women and minorities, particularly in the large law firm, -an increasingly important sector of the legal profession. Both the special issue and this paper focus on three initiatives -diversity, work-life balance and wellbeing -purportedly designed to alleviate such disadvantage. The paper argues that distinctive features of capital in the large law firm, while ignoring the structural and underlying conditions for creation and maintenance of such disadvantage, limit the potential of such initiatives at the same time as renewing disadvantage.

The past decade has seen many developments in anti-discrimination law in Great Britain, from the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Treaty of Amsterdam 1997, to the EU framework directive for equal treatment in employment introducing three new protected grounds between 2003 and 2006 (and the subsequent extension beyond employment, in national law, of two of those grounds). All of these, and myriad implementing regulations, build on the national foundations set by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976. With formal equality remaining the dominant model, this article looks at the scope for positive measures within British anti-discrimination law.While UK anti-discrimination law has both endogenous and European origins, both systems have adopted formal rather than substantive equality as the dominant model. Whereas formal equality demands that people in similar circumstances should be treated equally, substantive equality covers a multitude of aims including equality of opportunities and equality of ends. Accordingly, measures taken to promote the opportunities of a group, whilst attracting lip-service commendation, have, in the past, only received the backing of the law in the most limited form -as to do otherwise could infringe the principle of equal treatment. This is not the case, however, with regard to disability discrimination which is treated as a discrimination apart and as such will be dealt with later on in this article.All of the other pieces of discrimination legislation contain limited derogations from the principle of equal treatment, which thereby affords some small scope for positive discrimination, as well as containing provisions allowing for limited 'positive action'. The effect and interpretation of these provisions have changed over time and the desire to further the interests of under-represented women has led to judicial re-writing of contracts and to the European Court of Justice suggesting that positive sex discrimination may be permissible, but only where the candidates are of equal merit and provided that there is no automatic preference for women. The legislation, while generally similar, is not always in pari materia and it is therefore necessary to look at the details of the legislation and case law: how they vary according to subject matter, and how they relate to each other. The law regarding discrimination, and with it the possibilities of positive discrimination, has been subject to much change over the last decade and the recent addition of positive duties on local authorities, while limited to race, sex and disability, raises the possibility of a contractual rather than just a tortious approach to combating discrimination.There is now legislation on discrimination covering sex (including gender re-assignment and marital status), colour and nationality, racial or ethnic origin, disability, religion or belief,