Gender Justice | The Harksen Case

The Harksen Case became famous for its step-by-step exposition of how proportionality analysis should be used when balancing the interests of persons whose rights were being limited against the public interest being served by the limitation. But it also dealt with the issue of gender discrimination. Harksen was a crook who gave his wife expensive jewellery that she hid in her trainers in her gym locker. When he was declared insolvent, the question was whether her assets should, as the Insolvency Act required, automatically be included in his insolvent estate, unless she could prove that they belonged separately to her. Was this provision an example of unfair discrimination on the grounds of gender? The majority of the Court thought it was not. In his dissent, Justice Sachs said that it was an example of a widespread and insidious pattern regarding wives as extensions of their husbands rather than independent personalities. Did this mean that ‘If Jack fell down and broke his crown, Jill came tumbling after?'