Regulating Socio-Economic Inequality : Utilising a Human Rights and Equality Law Framework

This book offers a bold, interdisciplinary framework for using equality and human rights law to tackle the growing crisis of socio-economic inequality in modern society.

Socio-economic inequality is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. Over the past decade, homelessness has surged, foodbank reliance has intensified, benefits have been cut, and precarious work has proliferated—while the wealth of the richest has reached unprecedented heights.

Legal scholarship has begun to address this issue, particularly through equality and human rights law. Yet much of this work remains narrowly legalistic, overlooking crucial insights from other disciplines—such as how socio-economic inequality is defined and the diverse ways it might be regulated.

This book fills those gaps. It outlines how equality and human rights law can more effectively respond to socio-economic inequality by:
- offering a comprehensive definition of socio-economic inequality;
- developing new rationales for legal intervention;
- analysing how law can address its various dimensions; and
- exploring enforcement mechanisms beyond the courtroom.