Law According To A King

Mill's 'harm principle' forms the basis of many of our legal principles, particularly when viewed from the perspective of a liberal critic. This harm principle, which states that the law should only regulate behaviour to prevent harm to others, has a particularly strong case when considering anti-discrimination law, which exists primarily to prevent people from suffering the effects of both direct and indirect discrimination - direct being when a rule singles a group out for unfavourable treatment (think segregation or denying service to gay customers), and indirect being when an apparently neutral rule has a disproportionate impact on a minority group (for example, literacy qualifications for voting may disproportionately harm immigrants or minorities from low-education backgrounds). The harm principle underpins much of anti-discrimination law, but when it comes to certain areas, the law seemingly abandons it and takes a different approach, and these shall be examined in t...