Enforcing rights in employment tribunals: insights from age discrimination claims in a new ‘dataset’

Abstract

The online publication of employment tribunal (ET) decisions in England, Wales and Scotland marks a watershed moment, opening up new innovative avenues for legal research, and promoting transparency in labour law decision-making. Drawing on this ‘dataset’, and using age discrimination decisions as a lens to facilitate analysis, this paper reflects on the advantages and limitations of using online ET decisions as a data source to support labour law research. By considering matters of time in age discrimination decisions – both in relation to time limits for bringing a claim, and ET delays – this paper uses innovative empirical findings to map the limits of the individual enforcement model adopted by discrimination laws, and illustrates some of the barriers to successfully bringing a claim for discrimination.

Gendered Capital and Litigants in EU Equality Case‐Law

“…For example, Blackham combined doctrinal, content and quantitative methods in her work on age discrimination in Employment Tribunals of England and Wales, and Scotland. 159 The objectives of this article, to develop a new interdisciplinary analytical framework and associate it with patterns that emerge through a quantitative analysis of the Equality Law in Europe database, render mixed-methods analysis an ideal choice. Moreover, the nature of the dataset, with the overwhelming majority of the data being categorical or nominal, ensures that the descriptive strand of quantitative methodology is aptly suited to serve the objectives of this macro-level study.…”