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The "Majestic Equality" Of The Law: Why Constitutional Strategies Do Not Produce Equality, Harry Arthurs

Harry Arthurs

Paper Presented at a workshop on Equality, at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Nantes, France, in June, 2014. Two epidemiological studies — the Whitehall Studies of 1967 and 1988 — famously demonstrated that socio-economic status is a primary determinant of health outcomes. By locating a large cohort of British civil servants on a social-class gradient, researchers were able to show that individuals at successively lower levels on that gradient experienced diminishing prospects of good health and longevity. This conclusion was complemented by subsequent studies that concluded that degrees of inequality in a society — rather than absolute levels of wealth …