Acknowledgements
Equality issues have been the subject of my research and teaching for some 40 years. In many respects, these 40 years have witnessed profound developments in the conceptualization of equality and non-discrimination as legal standards across jurisdictions. This book is the result of my long term engagement with the topic. In writing it, I am greatly indebted to all those scholars, students and other people who have inspired me so much during these years by their shared commitment to human rights and the ideals of equality and non-discrimination. Time and again, by engaging with them in reading, writing and/or discussing, they made me think through and rethink my understandings of these crucial notions as legal concepts. There are too many to thank them all in person, but some people and work experiences stand out in shaping my thoughts.
When I started out, I was lucky to be hired as a junior assistant professor by Jenny Goldschmidt, who was leading an innovative research and teaching project in feminist legal studies at Leiden University Law School. I was also lucky to be teamed up with Rikki Holtmaat, who had already earned a name in feminist approaches to law. The three of us formed the tiny, but very active and fruitful section ‘Women and Law’. I could not have had a more inspirational start of my working life. In this formative period I developed the foundations for my thinking on equality as a legal principle in my doctoral thesis.1 Thanks to the particular expertise of my supervisors Jenny Goldschmidt and Evert Alkema in constitutional and human rights law, these two perspectives became part and parcel of my intellectual baggage.
Following Jenny to Utrecht University, and moving fully to this institution in 1995 as associate and later full professor in women’s legal studies, significantly added to further broadening my expertise. At Utrecht University I came to work with two other wonderful experts in gender studies who proved to be of lasting influence, Susanne Burri and Marjolein van den Brink. Of all the people I worked with over the years, Jenny, Susanne and Marjolein stand out more than any other by the way in which they brought me enduring bonds of academic and social friendship. In Utrecht, the small section ‘Women’s legal studies’ was embedded over time in different departments of the Law School. This brought new opportunities for collaboration and engaging in new research areas. My colleagues from the vibrant social law department made me look with new eyes to how equality issues play out in areas such as social security and employment. Moving to the department of legal theory subsequently led to increasing collaboration with colleagues working in the field of legal theory, philosophy and socio-legal studies. This stimulated me to engage in the then raging debates on multiculturalism and human rights. Becoming one of the coordinators of the research programme on human rights led to a long-time, inspired collaboration with SIM, the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, in particular with Ineke Boerefijn, Kees Flinterman, and later – again – Jenny Goldschmidt.
A final phase with a profound influence on the approach taken in this book started in 2013 when I returned to Leiden University. Thanks to the then Dean of the Law School and committed human rights expert, Rick Lawson, I was given the unique opportunity to design and develop an advanced LLM in European and International Human Rights Law. Teaching on the global and regional human rights systems from a comparative perspective greatly extended my knowledge of these systems; teaching a course on transnational non-discrimination law refreshed my comparative engagement with approaches to equality as a legal concept across jurisdictions.
During all of these periods, enduring inspiration for the present book has come from several other sources.
To start with, students have always played an important role. Whether it was regular law students I taught who were often sceptical of the topic or the committed ones who chose our courses as electives, they all sharpened my mind and induced me to always look for testing the validity of abstract theory and notions by providing concrete examples from everyday law and life. I am particularly grateful to the students of the advanced LLM in human rights at Leiden University for bringing perspectives from across the world into the classroom, which profoundly influenced me both as an academic and as a person.
In addition, the international network of scholars and other professionals I became part of over the years was a crucial source of inspiration for developing more global and diverse perspectives. Several extended research visits merit a special word of thanks. In 1990 a semester spent at New York University provided the opportunity to visit several leading feminist legal scholars, including Sylvia Law who hosted me, Frances Olsen, Martha Fineman and Martha Minow. The latter’s book ‘Making all the difference’ had a lasting influence on my understanding of equality.2 In 1994, several months of guest lecturing in the new South Africa at the Universities of the Western Cape and of Cape Town also proved to have a profound influence on shaping my thoughts on equality; particularly in terms of the crucial importance of context and including Global South perspectives. In 2005 my participation in the multidisciplinary 2004/2005 Fulbright New Century Scholars project ‘Towards Equality: the global empowerment of women’ brought me together with some 30 other scholars from the US and around the world to work for a year on this common theme. The unique and diverse composition of this group, with strong and vocal input from Global South perspectives, left their distinct marks on my thinking ever since.
It is impossible to do justice to the inspiration I received from the many people I met at conferences, but a particular highlight was the international conference Peter Rodrigues and I organized ourselves in 1998 on comparative perspectives on non-discrimination law.3 Of similar significance was the international expert seminar on religious pluralism and human rights in Europe which we organized at Utrecht University in 2006 on the occasion of the inaugural lecture by Abdullahi An-Naím, who was appointed on the rotating G.J. Wiarda Chair.4
Another enduring source of inspiration has come from the editorial board of the main Dutch human rights law journal, the NJCM-Bulletin, of which I was part for around 30 years. I will always cherish the memories of the many passionate discussions we had, which were happily matched with a strong feeling of companionship.
Some final words of special thanks are due to several of my former and current colleagues who commented on one or more draft chapters of this book: Adriaan Bedner, Marjolein van den Brink, Susanne Burri, Jenny Goldschmidt, Aart Hendriks and Nadia Sonneveld. It was a great pleasure to discuss these drafts with them and I hope I have done justice to their insightful comments and reflections.
Last, but certainly not least, I thank Ruud, my 40-year life companion, who has been there for me from the very start of my working life with his warm, loving and cheerful presence. I can only hope we will enjoy many more wonderful years together.
Leiden, August 2024
T. Loenen, Verschil in gelijkheid. De conceptualisering van het juridische gelijkheidsbeginsel met betrekking tot vrouwen en mannen in Nederland en de Verenigde staten (Difference in equality – the conceptualization of the legal principle of equality as regards women and men in the Netherlands and the United States), Doctoral thesis, Leiden University, 1992.
M. Minow, Making all the difference. Inclusion, exclusion, and American law, Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 1990.
The keynote lectures and a selection of the papers were published in T. Loenen and P. Rodrigues (eds), Non-discrimination law: comparative perspectives, The Hague/London/Boston, Kluwer Law International, 1999.
It resulted in a compilation of his lecture and the papers presented at this seminar in M.L.P. Loenen and J.E. Goldschmidt (eds), Religious pluralism and human rights in Europe: where to draw the line? Intersentia, Antwerpen/Oxford, 2007.