Socio-Legal Discussion Group: Gender and Ethnic Equality in Claims for Socio-Economic Rights: A Study of the Supreme Court's Equality Jurisprudence in Nepal

This thesis explores how the Supreme Court in Nepal interprets equality in cases of ethnic and gender inequality within socio-economic rights claims. It applies to a critical discourse-informed approach to examine the interpretative strategies the Court uses to frame equality. This analysis is complemented by interviews with two Supreme Court Justices who authored six of the fifteen judgments studied.

The study shows that judicial reasoning both reflects prevailing social norms and challenges deeply rooted systems of stratification and hierarchy. Rather than introducing theoretical understandings of equality deductively, the thesis uses them as interpretive anchors to understand how the Court constructs meaning in specific contexts. It argues that grasping the inequality that generates the need for equality is essential to understanding the Court’s framing.

To ground this analysis, the thesis traces the historical evolution of equality in Nepal and its connection to socio-economic rights, including the role of social movements in shaping constitutional ideals. It finds that the Court considers the Constitution a special kind of anti-hierarchical social contract, built on dismantling structural inequalities such as patriarchy and ethnic discrimination. The thesis further analyzes how the Court frames the constituent elements of equality, including the notion that equality evolves through a dialectical interaction between law and society.

It identifies two complementary judicial methods: one where the Court’s understanding of social inequality informs its legal conception of equality, and another where legal principles are used to interpret social realities. The study concludes by proposing a hypothetical framework for how the Court conceptualizes the relationship between law and society in framing legal equality.