When is Age Discrimination a Human Rights Violation?

Neuman and Ibrahim describe some of the positive law frameworks on age discrimination at the national and international levels. They look at examples from the United States, and at the existing human rights treaties. Stepping back from positive law, they discuss the normative purpose or purposes served by antidiscrimination rules. They then examines four complementary reasons for questioning a generalized prohibition of direct discrimination on the basis of chronological age as a human right, and proposes instead a more selective approach. Finally, they show that the argument for selectivity applies even more strongly to indirect discrimination.