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The Development of a Casebook as Part of a Broader Project
The production of this casebook was part of a larger project entitled: 'Stimulating Public Interest Litigation at a Pan-European Level - Raising Knowledge and Imparting Skills' which was funded by the European Commission within the framework of the 'Community Action programme to combat discrimination, 2001-2006'. The project consisted of two complementary elements:
- the organisation of Summer Schools in 2005 and 2006 on disability and on race, ethnic origin and religious belief.
- the development of a European Non-Discrimination Law Casebook with associated internet site.
The Casebook strand also provided a comprehensive and composite knowledge base which was used as the basis for the Summer School programmes. In turn, the Summer School programmes added an extra dimension of imparting skills and yielded further information and insights of use in editing the Casebook.
The following summer schools, training courses and other events have been organised:
- Disability Discrimination Law Summer School: Comparative Perspectives on Effective Test Case Strategies under the EU Framework Directive (National University of Ireland, 4-15 July 2005)
- Summer School on Race, Ethnic Origin, Religion and Belief. General course (Maastricht University, 13-22 June, 2005) and Advanced course (European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, 23-24 June, 2005)
- Conference: Non-Discriminatory Europe. Towards Equality on Grounds of Race, Ethnic Origin and Religion? (Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, 24-25 April 2006)
- Training Courses on Race, Ethnic Origin, Religion, Belief and Disability (Maastricht University, National University of Ireland, European Institute of Public Administration and Centre for European Policy Studies (Maastricht, 14-20 May, 2006)
- Disability Discrimination Summer School (National University of Ireland, 6-16 June 2006)
The Approach
The influence of EC non-discrimination law upon national law encourages tendencies towards convergence and facilitates the distillation of common roots, and this has been examined in the casebook. The Casebook does not only cover the grounds of discrimination addressed in the Race and Employment Directives, but also covers non-discrimination law relating to gender. However, the book presents a balanced overview, and does not focus predominantly on this single ground. Moreover, rather than following a ground specific approach, the casebook is structured along the lines of themes which present themselves in cases of non-discrimination generally. The law of a large number of existing and future EU Member States has been covered. Mention has also been made of e.g. United States' law which may serve as an interpretative tool from which lessons for best practice may be drawn.
The Objectives of the Casebook
The casebook has a number of objectives:
- to provide practitioners with ready access to primary and secondary legal material needed to assist them in crafting test case strategies.
- to provide the judiciary with the tools needed to respond sensitively to such cases.
- to provide material to be used in Summer Schools.
- to facilitate a full overview of implementation of the Directives and of the state of the law with regard to all grounds covered by Article 13 EC including gender.
- to promote the move towards common high European standards in this area.
- to create awareness of best practice.
- be a tool to educate future European lawyers.
The pursued key results are:
- to substantially upgrade the knowledge-base and impart the necessary practical skills to enable practitioners to identify and pursue appropriate test cases.
- to expand the framework of reference beyond national law by exposing practitioners to creative interpretative approaches as revealed through an examination of European comparative law.
- to enrich the judicial process by enhancing the possibility of access to materials and practical examples of argumentative strategies.
The project aims not merely at stimulating test cases but also tries to ensure that its users are aware of the limitations as well as possibilities of the various argumentative strategies that are available. The casebook also provides examples of good (and bad) practice (including non-European initiatives / case law), facilitates cross fertilisation, i.e. the "copying" of examples of good practice by the judicial system (a challenge in a multi-lingual Europe with limited access to legislation and, particularly, case law outside the home jurisdiction), and reveals failures and inadequate implementation where legislative/judicial activism may be required.
