Equality Legislation: A Critical Analysis - Coursework Example

EQUALITY LEGISLATION: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS by The of the The of the School The and The The legislative system of any country has its own peculiarities. It represents the basic provisions, which are required for the security of the rights of the population. All aspects of the legislative systems are important for the correct functioning of the life of the society. However, this work is dedicated to the question of equality in the system of law in Great Britain. Analyzing different legal acts, one cannot but notice the paper, which changed lives of thousands of people in 1995. This legislative measure is the Disability Discrimination Act. The aim of this paper is to analyze the Act and its main provisions in terms of the content of equality. “Direct discrimination is where a person is treated worse than someone else because of their disability. In order to show that there has been discrimination, a person must show that there is a link between their disability and the way they were treated. For example, if a person is told that she will not be promoted because she has schizophrenia but that her colleague will be because she does not have any mental health problems, this would be direct discrimination. The person with schizophrenia has been treated less favorably than her colleague, and the reason for this is her disability” (Civil Legal Advice Service, 2014). The Disability Discrimination Act was accepted by the Parliament of Great Britain and signed in 1995. The Act aimed to protect the civil rights of the people, who suffer from different disabilities. Besides the social protection, the Act gives disabled people the ability for receiving the appropriate work place and accommodation, which is the concern of the employee. The emergence of this Act caused the question of what disability is. “The federal definition of a disability is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having such an impairment” (Arnold, K., 1999). It means that the standards of disability include both physical and mental deviations of the individual. “Many of the beliefs, misperceptions, and attitudes about mental problems and the people who have them are deeply rooted and stem from a lack of knowledge about what it means to have a mental disorder” (Fielder, J. F., 1994, 9). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission identified the criteria of a disability and provided such examples of it as blindness and deafness, cancer, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and so forth. The emergence of the Act was predetermined by the historical background and was thoroughly developed. It protects the rights of disabled people in various spheres of public life such as: education, work, transport and so forth. Its main purpose is to provide equality for the disabled part of the population with those, who do not have any health problems. However, in order to use the opportunities of the Act, the citizen firstly had to prove his disabled condition. “Once a person proves that she has a physical or mental impairment, she must then show that this impairment rises to the level of a disability” (Kozinets, M. I., 1995)”. Looking through the Act, it becomes clear that during its creation, it underwent a thorough analysis. The paper consists of several provisions, each of which describes the rights of disabled people in a particular public area. The first provision (employment) equalizes the rights of disabled people with the ordinary ones in acquiring a job. It states that employees must create the appropriate work conditions for the disabled qualified work candidates and all other items, concerning work conditions (pension scheme, insurance service, the validity of work agreements, charity and so forth). The Act also requires from the employees to provide the disabled workers with reasonable accommodation for their further successful functioning at work. The second provision (discrimination in other areas) concerns mostly the issues of right protection of people with limited abilities in relation to dwelling and accommodation. The government in this provision deals with the problems, which include exemption for small dwellings, alterations of premises occupied under leases and the conciliation of disputes. It regulates the social troubles, which face disabled people, during the procedure of choosing, buying or keeping the property, creating strict rules, prohibiting the discrimination or sabotage of any of these processes. The third provision (education) protects the rights of disabled students and concerns such issues as providing the further opportunities for Higher Education of such people and their support by the local authorities, the rate of scholarships, fringe benefits, usage of educational premises with the appropriate conditions and so forth. The main purpose of this provision is to protect the rights of disabled people in the sphere of education and provide the appropriate conditions for their comfortable existence. The fourth provision (supplemental) concerns the actions of State and Local Governments in relation to the issues of discrimination in the sphere of public services. It represents the interconnection of DDA with other laws and issues of governmental concern, such as insurance process, attorney’s expanses, the fake representation of disability and so forth. This title regulates the main provisions of the system of legislation. In this case, the Act refers mostly to the members of State and Local authorities, who deal with different services and activity programs (victimization, national security, unlawful acts and so forth). The DDA calls the organizers of these events to take care about people with disabilities and include them in the programs on the equal terms with others. This provision describes the administrative processes and requirements, which must be executed. They include not only the questions of planning and organizing of these programs, but also political, economic and cultural changes, which are necessary for the evaluation of the discrimination of disabled people. The fifth provision (public transport) holds the set of measures, which provide the comfortable conditions for disabled people in terms of outside movement. It predetermines such points as: carrying the passengers in wheelchairs, appeal against the refuse of transportation of the disabled people, transportation fees, providing the places for disabled and so forth. Considering the DDA, one constantly refers to its historical background. From the first sight, it may seem that DDA has the conservative expression. Ed Stine writes “The United Kingdom passed the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, most recently amending it in 2005, as a way to make sure disabled people received fair treatment and had the same opportunities as everyone else. The law protects disabled peoples rights in business, public administration, transportation and other areas of day-to-day life. The acts regulations prevent harassment, but it also requires businesses and other agencies to accommodate disabled people” (Stein, E., 2012). The creation of the Act and its development predetermined radical changes in the society and influenced the functioning of all public governmental institutions. Consequently, we can consider these methods as more radical than conservative ones. The new law provisions had both the supporters and opponents. The first mostly included the representatives of disabled population, while the second referred to the employees and different governmental establishments, which had to reorganize their work according to the new state requirements. It was caused by their vision of disabled people as problematic and quite inconvenient labor resource. Justifying the decision of the Congress, its members asked other people to look at disabled ones as the ordinary individuals. “In order to achieve nondiscrimination, society enters into a contact with a person who has a disability. Society agrees to structure or manipulate the social and physical environment in every reasonable way with the goal of creating an experience that is meaningful equal opportunity for the individual with the disability” (West, J., 1991). The aim of the government was to maintain the issues of justice and equality on the social level, requiring the help of the population for its implementation. As any other legal document, DDA has its own advantages and disadvantages. Viewing the positive sides of the Act, one can admit such qualities as clearness and well structure. The general law represents several provisions, which describe the branches of its application, making them clear for the concern of the ordinary reader. Each point is quite robust and has a legal basis. Considering the effectiveness of this law, Hurstfield writes “Many people are still not aware that they have many new rights. And employers and service providers are often unsure how to implement “best practice” to make it easier for disabled people to use their services or gain employment” (2004). Thus, one can see that providing the disabled population with the information about its rights is the weak point of this legislative statement. Besides, DDA requires a lot of investments, which were predetermined by the State and Local Governments. However, their distribution and withdrawal as well as the level of finance depend upon the activity of people, approving their disability. It hampers the subsequent execution of their obligations by the governmental establishments. In order to reveal the content of equality and the difference in its functioning in different countries, we contrast the Disability Discrimination Act with the American Discrimination Act, which was accepted on July, 26, 1990 by the Congress of the USA. Unlike the Disability Discrimination Act this paper concerns particularly disabled people, and deals with the issues of discrimination in the narrower way. It highlights mostly such aspects for disabled as transportation, jobs, schools and so forth. The Disability Discrimination Act has the similar aim with ADA, in particular to provide equality in all private and public processes, despite the individual peculiarities of the person and his diverse from the rest of the population. While viewing the process of implementing of this policy it becomes clear that it is quite progressive in terms of employment and work safety. Thus, we can see that the project is also successful in terms of social change. In the period of one year, the USA managed to implicate it inside the system of State and Local Government and make the life of the discriminated people more effective and progressive in terms of employment and public relationships. The subsequent changes in the society in terms of the ADA were closely interconnected with the economic influence on the process of its implementation. First of all, the Act required certain finances, which must have been compensated by the employees or particular public services. However, the government provided a financial support for the companies, which participate in the implementation of the Act. Concluding this article, it is necessary to mention that modern legalization systems of Great Britain provides a wide variety of acts and political amendments for the regulation of the questions of equality in the society. The Disability Discrimination Act is a great example of the support of the issues of justice and loyalty of the government of Great Britain. It concentrates people’s attention on the healthy legal system of the UK, providing its population with the comfortable life conditions. The Legislative system of the UK has always been famous for its reserved and strict system of law establishment and enforcement, which provided the order in the internal structure of the county. The efficiency of the legislative system of the UK is predetermined by the wide range of the systems, used for the choice and development of country reforms. The constitutional law plays one of the most important roles in the application of these reforms and their execution. The violation of any law in Great Britain causes strict sanctions, not legal but political ones. It becomes clear that the legislative system of the UK is one of the most organized in the world. References Arnold, K., 1999. Americans With Disabilities Act: Do Cancer Patients Qualify as Disabled? Retrieved from: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/91/10/822.full Civil Legal Advice Service, 2014. Disability Discrimination – Legal Briefing. Retrieved from: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/disability-discrimination/ Fielder, J. F., 1994. Mental disabilities and the Americans with disabilities act. A concise compliance manual for executives. London: Quorum Books. Hurstfield, J. 2004. Monitoring the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995. Retrieved from: http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/hurstfield-Final-pdf.pdf Kozinets, M. I., 1995. The Americans with disabilities act: does the ADA protect a person with the chronic fatigue syndrome from employment discrimination. Retrieved from: http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1217&context=hlelj Monagan, K., 2005. Blackstones guide to the disability discrimination legislation. New York: Oxford University Press Stein, P., 1984. Legal institutions: the development of dispute settlement. London: Butterworth. Stein, E., 2012. Disability Discrimination Act Regulations. Retrieved from: http://www.ehow.com/list_6565182_disability-discrimination-act-regulations.html Vellani, F., 2013. Understanding Disability Discrimination Law through Geography. Surray: Ashgate West, J., 1991. The Americans with disabilities act. From policy to practice. New York: Milbank memorial fund. Barnes, C., Mercer, G., 2003. Disability. Cambridge: Polity Press Read More