Law and social justice: intersectional dimensions

Starting with the precarious relation of law and social justice, this paper focuses on how the law might contribute to fighting social injustice that is based on intersecting categories of oppression. Against the background of this broad aspiration of social justice committed to providing the conditions for equal freedom, special attention is given to the role of intersectional legal thinking and its contribution to antidiscrimination law, one core tool of legal efforts at institutionalizing social justice. It is shown how the law has often failed those seeking its protection due to an inadequate understanding of intersecting grounds of discrimination, particularly Black women. The paper develops a concept of (legal) categories as normatively constituted and intersectionally enriched as a precondition for transcending the shortcomings of conventional single category approaches in antidiscrimination law. In view of this approach, several cases decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) are explored, specifically those concerning Muslim women wearing headscarves. It is shown how the CJEU failed at taking the intersection of gender, religion, and race/ethnicity seriously, and what an adequate approach to these cases might look like. The paper concludes with a call to exploring intersectional legal thinking committed to social justice in a broad fashion.