Equality before the law

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Equality before the law, also known as equality under the law, equality in the eyes of the law, legal equality, or legal egalitarianism, is the principle that all people must be equally protected by the law.

The legalist philosopher Guan Zhong (720–645 BC) declared that "the monarch and his subjects no matter how great and small they are complying with the law will be the great order".^[7]

The 431 BC

The fifth demand of the South African Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955, is "All Shall Be Equal Before The Law!"^[12]

Article 200 of the

In 1774, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "All men have one common original, they participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common right. No reason can be assigned why one man should exercise any power over his fellow creatures more than another, unless they voluntarily vest him with it".^[15]

In Social Statics, Herbert Spencer defined it as a natural law "that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty to every other man". Stated another way by Spencer, "each has freedom to do all that he wills provided that he infringes not the equal freedom of any other".^[16]

Equality before the law is a tenet of some branches of feminism. In the 19th century, gender equality before the law was a radical goal, but some later feminist views hold that formal legal equality is not enough to create actual and social equality between women and men. An ideal of formal equality may penalize women for failing to conform to a male norm while an ideal of different treatment may reinforce sexist stereotypes.^[17]

In Reed v. Reed, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg highlighted the evolving the nature of the phrase, "We, the People" in the U.S Constitution emphasizing how it has become more inclusive over time. She discussed the progression of women's roles in society, noting that women were fully recognized as citizens and gained the right to vote, which allowed them to be treated equally under the Fourteenth Amendment. Ginsburg's comments focus on the historical and legal advancements regarding gender equality without promoting a specific ideological stance. ^[18]

In 1988, prior to serving as a Justice of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote: "Generalizations about the way women or men are – my life experience bears out – cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals. At least in the law, I have found no natural superiority or deficiency in either sex. In class or in grading papers from 1963 to 1980, and now in reading briefs and listening to arguments in court for over seventeen years, I have detected no reliable indicator or distinctly male or surely female thinking – even penmanship".^[19] In an American Civil Liberties Union's Women's Rights Project in the 1970s,^[20] Ginsburg challenged in Frontiero v. Richardson the laws that gave health service benefits to wives of servicemen, but not to husbands of servicewomen.^[21] There are over 150 national constitutions that currently mention equality regardless of gender.^[22]