Formal equality is the only equality any legal system can guarantee
Evidence
Moreover, many kinds of de facto equality are beyond the capacity of any legal system to secure, and may even be undesirable to try to secure. But every legal system is capable of arriving at the simple ethical, or religious, judgment that the moral worth of one normal human is the same as thht of any other. And every system is capable of supporting this judgment by the recognition of formal equality before the law. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 4437
Categorization
- QUESTION: The claim that de facto equality is ‘beyond the capacity’ of legal systems and ‘may even be undesirable to try to secure’ invites examination against the reader’s polyad interest in environmental justice and material inequality.
- XREF: connects to: General incorporation laws dissolved a major instrument of social control — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 4449; Formal legal equality cannot deliver justice without social equality — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 958; Formal legal equality leaves substantive social inequality untouched — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 959 (+11 more)
Broader Connections
- Formal legal equality cannot deliver justice without social equality
#contradicts(0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 958 - Formal equal right applied to unequal individuals necessarily produces inequality.
#contradicts(0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 416 - Formal legal equality alone cannot produce fair outcomes after generations of structural disadvantage.
#contradicts(0.92) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 986 - Formal legal equality leaves substantive social inequality untouched
#contradicts(0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 959 - Formal legal equality masks substantive inequality between rich and poor
#contradicts(0.90) - Formal legal equality obscures real inequality because equivalence as a legal norm ignores difference
#contradicts(0.88) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 786 - European continent substituted formal legal equality for real equality of condition
#contradicts(0.85) - Formal equality doctrine becomes a weapon against material equality
#contradicts(0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 959 - Law converts difference into sameness to enable formal equal treatment
#contradicts(0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 82 - Legal equality before the law requires negating actual individuality
#contradicts(0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 793 - Formal equality in the right to communicate masks actual communicative injustice
#contradicts(0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 992 - True equality among people is impossible due to inescapable uniqueness
#qualifies(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 187 - Formal legal equality coexists with justified second-class treatment for Muslims.
#expands(0.75)