Events

In Hanging in the Balance, Meghan Campbell tells “the other half of the story” of constitutional equality: not the definition of women’s substantive equality, but the function of justification in adjudicating its limits. This shift in focus is both original and urgently needed. For decades, feminist constitutional scholarship has concentrated on the equality stage—on the … Read more

The relationship between women’s right to equality and justifications for restricting that right has been, as Meghan Campbell observes, ‘overlooked, understudied and undertheorised’ (p.2). Hanging in the Balance: The Function of Justification in Achieving Women’s Equality serves as a corrective by meticulously analysing how apex courts adjudicate this relationship in Canada, India, South Africa, the … Read more

At a moment when women’s equality is increasingly contested—politically, socially, and legally—Hanging in the Balance: The Function of Justification in Achieving Women’s Equality by renowned scholar Meghan Campbell, arrives as both an intellectual intervention and a practical guide for courts. The book makes a compelling case that the promise of women’s equality cannot be realised … Read more

In a pair of cases, the Canadian Supreme Court found that provisions of the equal pay regime, a statutory limit on back pay and delayed implementation of methodology for correcting equal in female dominated industries, were a violation of section 15 of The Charter. Yet only one of these provisions was ultimately held to be … Read more

The blogs in this series by emerging and leading equality scholars examine the questions and ideas in Meghan Campbell’s new monograph Hanging in the Balance: Why Justification Matters to Feminist Legal Practice through the prism of their own research on equality. Vandita Khanna examines how justification operates in the context of race inequality in the … Read more

To my friend, the editor, I’d love to write you a detached academic essay, but oh my heart, I am so angry at the minute that I could spontaneously combust. Can you feel it, through the text? Can you feel the pulse of my rage? Anger is an energy. Stay angry, little Meg. Tropes and … Read more

Picture Jane Austen’s unpersuaded Anne Elliot or even Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham. The spinster is often understood as an unpleasant term for a woman of a certain age who has not married and does not have children. In contrast, the bachelors unmarried status gave him a carefree vibe, leaving him available for the roles of … Read more

There are many extraordinary things about the UK Supreme Court’s (UKSC) decision in Dillon. It is unpicking of at least half of Article 2 of the Windsor Framework – specifically undoing the elements that protect human rights in Northern Ireland post Brexit. Its use of interpretive tools to undertake what I’m sure it regards, to … Read more

The publication of The Katie Simpson Review on 27 April 2026 marks a pivotal, albeit devastating, moment for legal reform in Northern Ireland. Commissioned by the Minister of Justice in the absence of traditional mechanisms like a Domestic Homicide Review (DHR), the report exposes the systemic invisibility of femicide within Northern Ireland’s legal system (Department … Read more

Reflections from organising the Engaging Utopias workshop, 9-10 of March in Dublin. Utopia can be understood as “the expression of the desire for a better way of being or of living” and, for instance, may entail a critique of the present, as well as political imagination or active struggle. As yet, literature on topics such … Read more