Talat Yaqoob: in one case that was described, it was because a young woman had decided to start wearing the hijab. That was reason enough for her to be considered, potentially radicalised. Now that is the demonization of her religion. That's a denemonization of the expression of religion, a religious belief. And so that is an example of where the implementation of so called protection in law is, implemented in a way, and in my view also written in a way that demonise a particular communityians.

Jen Ang: Hello and welcome to a special series of three podcasts, part of our Equal under the Law series, which explores three big questions about the complex relationship between law and social justice through interviews with some of Scotland's most inspiring and impactful activists campaigning today. Over the past few months we have interviewed 11 guests for the Lamanity podcast who work across a range of social justice issues, including LGBT rights, racial justice, migrants rights, Scottish traveller rights, disability justice and the rights of women and girls survivors. We asked each of these guests three big question because we wanted to understand what their personal experience is, whether drawn from a few years of campaigning or sometimes as many as four decades of activism, told them about the relationship between law and justice. We also have a content warning for you. As mentioned, some of the activists we interviewed with work with women and girls survivors of violence and that means there are some references to sexual violence, including rape in this episode. So today we're going to look at the answers we got to our first question. Do you feel the law works equally for you or for your community? Why or why not? Across the board, the answers for our guests was no, the law is not working equally for me and my community. And it was easy for them to express the reasons why. Let's start with this reflection from Pheona Matovu Pheona founded the charity Radiant and Brighter in Glasgow to create opportunities for racialized migrant people and their families to overcome the barriers to successful and healthy living in Glasgow.

Jen Ang: She thinks the law treats racialized people unequally and that is exactly what it is designed to do.

Pheona Matovu: I don't think, al least at this point in time. I'm not quite sure that I would put equality in the same sentence with law. I think the law is there to do something else other than equality. It's there to keep those it think are wrong, right, and perhaps those that are wrong and can pay more do different. so my work is with adversary racialized communities, people who experience, exclusion from systems, from processes, primarily, but I also work of course with organisations looking at what policies they can put in place. and in my research, one of the areas of course that I do touch on is the human rights, which obviously come from the law against the law about discrimination against people on the basis of colour. Now when we think about where it started, where human rights started, we've come so far that it's barely recognisable that it had anything to do with racism. And so I think the law is I don't know, it just, it leaves you in a place where should we be doing something different? Should the law be rethought? it feels like we keep adding layers to either dilute equality or increase power for those that hold power. So I wouldn't say it works. I think it does what the system wants it to do, which is often around exclusion. I understand that it is important to have the law of course, but I don't think that it has been designed equitably in order to achieve equity.

Jen Ang: Satwat Rehman, who has served as the Chief Executive Officer of One Parent Family Scotland for 14 years, agrees, sharing from a related perspective why she and the single parents she works with feel the law is working exactly as it is intended to do so by excluding and impoverishing single parents and their children.

Satwat Rahman: That is a really big question and I'm going to answer it by starting off by saying that there is no one answer to it. it depends on so many factors and I'll speak about that from the perspective of the single parent families that we work with. But also I'll speak about that as somebody who's grown up in a racially minoritized community here in the uk and for me it's also about a number of levels because sometimes the issue isn't with how lawyers are trying to test the law or to support people to realise their rights through the law. It's the flaws that are built in by the lawmakers and some of those aren't flaws which are unintentional. Some of that might be exactly what they want the policy to do, you know. And for single parents you see that a lot in the design of benefit support for example, where we might take, you know, and lawyers have through organisations like Child Poverty

Action Group taking cases to challenge things like the two child limit for example or the benefit cap and other things which disproportionately impact on single parent families.

Jen Ang: So here Satwat mentioned the benefit cap and the two child limit. These were both reforms made to the welfare system by the UK government which limits the amount of income that a family can receive, when they are receiving mainstream benefits. And these cases were taken by a child poverty action group, which is a charity, in conjunction with other organisations.

Jen Ang: In order to challenge the effect of.

Jen Ang: These welfare reform limits for poor families across the uk.

Satwat Rahman: But those cases haven't been successful because of the way the law was made and its intent. So I think there is something there about what role lawyers, who are activists and who believe in social justice can play in the development of the laws. Which is critical, I think, from this point of view, because I think what quite often happens is, after the bills are passed and they become acts and they're being enacted, it can be too late. And so there is something about how you can be more active as a profession in supporting campaigns and activism which is completely and utterly grounded in the experiences of the individuals who are meant to be the benefactors these laws, or actually being completely and utterly, and I'm not using this word wor lightly, but destroyed by the changes that are going to be taking place. As we can see at the moment, when we looked at disabled people's organisations and their response to the latest set of welfare reforms that the UK government is considering, which is all about reducing the benefit bill by forcing people, with lifetime conditions to be considering how they going to work, even though work may never be sustainable or affordable for them in terms of lifting them out of poverty. You know, there is so much evidence to show that the two child limit keeps and pushes families into poverty, you know, so on the one hand you've got a child poverty strategy being developed at UK level, on the other hand you've got them sticking with and pushing through further reforms that's going to increase poverty levels amongst families. So there, I would ask, is there a hierarchy in terms of which laws are considered important?

Jen Ang: Picking up on this theme of a disconnection between how the law is made, who the law serves and who is impacted by inequalities in the law. Pinar Aksu a migrant rights campaigner, theatre practitioner and PhD student at the University of Glasgow, sees this disconnection as intentional and rooted in deep historical tradition designed to reinforce inequalities.

Pinar Aksu: So within my work, I work in the migration sector, especially people who are seeking asylum and refuge. I think witnessing the changes of the immigration law has been really interesting in the last few years and also observing the pattern of the laws that was generated over the time. I mean the first immigration law we had in the UK was the 1905 Aliens Act. And then when you compare that to the current immigration laws, we have the language, when you look at the language of the way it's been described, within the legislations, but also within the title of the law as well, it makes you question, has anything changed, since more than 100 years ago? We still use similar divisive languages within the law when we are talking about movement, when we're designing and defining what migration is. and I think that's something as that is very disappointing to see that nothing has really changed. what's been interesting for me is, since I've started my PhD, every single year there was a new law on immigration that has passed. So we had the, Nationality and Borders Act and then we had the Illegal Migration Act and then we had the Rwanda Act. And now we have a new bill that's being proposed in the Parliament as well. So that's been very crucial for me to witness it and see how the law itself is developed, and to see who it benefits. And obviously it sometimes benefits certain people. It doesn't benefit the other people who really need protection. I also find it fascinating the way the performative side of the law as well. And that's something I've been looking into within my research about how the laws are designed, how legislations are designed, how they are being proposed, such as in House of Lords, House of Commons, and then you have this monarchy and then you have this place where decisions are being made, by an elite group of people who are, I think, truly disconnected from realities. and the performative element of it, of the fact that it's just, yah, a group of people making decisions for thousands and millions of people. and then that makes me question, is this what we want? And is this how the law should be drafted? What about people's voices? Can we have a structure where we reimagine how the law should be and how that should look like?

Jen Ang: Similarly, Talat Yaqoob, a political commentator, activist and co chair of the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls, sees the law is intentionally unequal, but because it sits within a wider context of systemic inequality and that the legal system is just one of the ways in which that inequality is perpetuated.

Talat Yaqoob: So if I was to talk about it for myself, and the vast majority of communities I work with, that would be, you know, the community of women, of sisterhood, the community of colours that I work with. So whether it was black, Asian minority, ethnic communities, disabled people's communities, that I work with and then Muslim communities, of which I am part and also work with. And it's a resounding no with the intention, you would hope, the intention of the law, seeing everybody as equal would be there. But the law in itself does not sit in a vacuum away from the realities of society, whether historic or current, existing. The institutionalised, the systemic inequalities are threaded into which laws are made, how they are made and critically how they're implemented and the mindsets, the thinking, the institutionalised inequalities across the board within that they will come to the fore in all of those spaces with whereever law is being written, developed, implemented. So unless there is some real proactive work to rectify that, then actually in the current society we exist within, can I ever treat everybody equally?

Jen Ang: In Talat's view, this leads to a kind of doublespeak where law is designed to keep the public safe, in reality operate to create unsafe spaces for some people and the law becomes an instrument to exclude harm and demonise minoritized groups.

Talat Yaqoob: The Counterrorism and Security Act of I think 2015. So in law, in writing, that is about keeping the nation and the nation's people safe, but actually it has created unsafe spaces, insec security and a, concern for those of us who will appear Muslim, who are particularly for black and brown men, for hijab or burqa weing women, and we see that largely through the way in which the prevent strategy, which is obviously part of that act, is implemented.

Jen Ang: Talat has referenced the prevent strategy. The Prevent strategy is the UK government's flagship counter extremism policy. it aims to identify people at risk of committing terrorist acts and to intervene, but controversially to achieve the same. The prevent duty requires public bodies, including schools, nurseries, universities, social services and healthare providers to monitor and report people they suspect are vulnerable to extremism. That brings teachers, doctors, social workers and others, into the realm of people who have responsibility for doing this.

Talat Yaqoob: Now human rights organisation have repeatedly called out and evidenced the racism and Islamophobia that is inherent in the way in which the PREVENT strategy has been implemented and how it is being used as a method to penalise rather than protect, and in particular what I often go to is the way in which the prevent strategy has a obligation on those who work in public sector, public authority spaces. So within our nhs, within schools, to report what they determine as extremism. And the definition of terrorism within it is so wide and if you think about systemic inequality and leaving it to the perceived objectivity of an individual to decide what is extremism? we have seen multiple reporting and referrals to prevent, which have been wholly inappropriate, uneidenced, a disproportionate number of children and young people. in one case that was described, it was because a young woman had decided to start wearing the hijab. That was reason enough for her to be considered, ah, potentially radicalised. Now that is the demonization of our religion. That's a denemonization of the expression of religion and religious belief. And so that is an example where the implementation of so called protection in law is, implemented in a way, and in my view also written in a way that demonise a particular community.

Jen Ang: Another way of looking at this question, does the law treat you and your community equally is to look at equality under the letter of the law or reform of the actual language and substance of the law in order to make it more equal. This is an area where many of the activists I spoke to have first hand experience of advocacy successes leading to, among other things, the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010.

Jen Ang: Tim Hopkins, who is an LGBT activist and also former director of the Equality Network, describes his assessment of how equality under the law for LGBT people has progressed since the 1980s in Scotland, but also ponders the challenges that remain for defending the rights of trans and non binary people under those same laws.

Tim Hopkins: Yes, so I suppose when I thought about this, I was also thinking about the definition of law. There's kind of two dimensions to that for the work that I've been involved in for a long time. One is what the law itself says. You know, what is in criminal law, what, what is criminal and what isn't in, civil law, what are people's rights and so on. So that's one dimension and then the other dimension is how the law works and beinga were to uphold your rights and what's involved in that. But to answer the question, when I started campaigning, which was back in the 1980s, the whole environment was that the law treated us very unfairly as LGBT people. and that's really what got me involved. So it was all about chang changing the law. and over the past 30 years, or a little more, 35 years, there have been big changes, big positive changes to the law as it affects LGBT people in Scotland and across the UK and other places as well. I made a list and there, you know, there's about 10, 10 really important things on the list. And in fact I look back at the Equality Network's first manifesto for the first Scottish parliament election in 1999. Almost everything on that manifesto has been done and most of the things on the manifesto were about changing the law. and since then we added some additional things that weren't such high priorities, but, a large number of them have been done. So, you know, in terms of whether the law works for LGBT people, for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, that always far better now than it was 30 years ago. For trans people, things are really quite different. There have been some improvements. You know, the two key things are the gender recognition system that came in in 2004 and and the anti discrimination, anti harraassment laws which are now in the Equality act, which date back to originally 1999. but both those things have been seriously undermined this year in particular by the Supreme Court judgement back in April in four women Scotland versus Scottish ministers, which is a huge, huge problem. So for trans people the law is definitely not working at the moment.

Jen Ang: Sandy Brindley, CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland, has also seen legislative change in seeking justice for survivors of sexual violence. And she reflects on how we may have come far but we still have far to go.

Sandy Brindley: I started in Rape Crisis, as a volunteer and I think it was 1994. So it was in me 30 years that have involved in Rape Crisis. And a lot of that work has been working around legal responses to sexual crime and trying to improve legal responses to sexual crime. And I still remember really vividly the first woman that I supported in court when she was given evidence in a raped town. I think it must have been like maybe 96, and I was so shocked at ah, how she was treated. I actually couldn't believe it. it wasn't just the questions, it was just the demeanour of the defence lawyer was almost mocking and so demeaning towards her. And I thought here is a woman who, this is devastating for her is terrifying, going to give evidence in court and we're treating her with such a lack of humanity. And that experience did have really quite a profound impact on me in terms of, I suppose a lot of the work I've done since then which has been engaging with the justice process to try and make it a little bit less traumatic for people in particularly women who are seeking justice. So all the time I ve worked at Rape Crisis I have seen really, really significant changes. I think there is no doubt that the law in Scotland and in mary jurisdictions fails Women who are seeking justice after rape, like undoubtedly you just need to look at the statistics how many cases never make it to court and the low convictionary of those that do. It's the lowest convictionary of any crime type rape has in

Scotland. But also just the stories that survivors tell us about how traumatic and violating experience has been of particularly of courte and of cross examination. So I think it's fair to say my strategies have maybe changed over the years when I was in my early 20s, filled with anger. You're not always that constructive I think in your approach when you just really feel the injustice of it. Whereas as time has progressed've realised that the way to make change really is relationship and finding common ground. And I think we have built some really positive relationships with the facult of advocates, with the Crown Office, with the court Service and really trying to work together to make things better, like while still retaining enough of a critical agege to stand outside and criticise where it's absolutely necessary. So that's a long way of saying no, I don't think the law does treat particularly women equally. We have experienced sexual crimes. I think it's getting better, but I think there's still a lot to do.

Jen Ang: In the last part of their reflections, both Tim Hopkins and Sandy Brindley pick up on another way in which activists assess whether or not the law is working equally. And that is by looking to outcomes as experienced by some of the communities the law is supposed to be serving equally. The disability justice movement was also key behind the move to adopt the Equality Act 2010 and a range of other modern legislation designed to better protect and support disabled people to access their rights. Tressa Burke, ah, a disability rights activist with over 30 years of experience and the chief

Executive Officer of the Glasgow Disability alliance, expresses her frustration at the failures of the law on the books to lead to real lasting change for disabled people.

Tressa Burke: So we have a raft of pieces of legislation and so my background is I'm a social worker to trade. So I'm not just talking about the, you know, the Human Rights, the Disability Discrimination Act the Equality Act. I'm also talking about the Chronically Second Disabled Persons Act, the Disabled

Person'act the Direct Payments act, the Self Directed Support Act. So there is a raft of legislation that tells disabled people that they should have rights across a whole range of areas. Some of them are about social care to enable independent living, some of them are about education and employment and provision of goods and services. And I would, yeah, I would confidently say that Disabled people do not have those rights observed or, realised across most of those areas. I don't think there is any area where I could say that I think disabled people fully have the right. So, I mean, it's a long answer, but I don't think that the law is working for disabled people, for diverse disabled people who are not only people with conditions and impairments, but who are also black and minority, ethnic or people of colour. They are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender queer. They are women. They are older people and younger people. So the law is not working for disabled people, but also very marginalised disabled people within that.

Jen Ang: Heather Fiskin, chief Executive Officer of Inclusion Scotland, Scotland's leading disabled people's organisation, agrees.

Heather Fisken: I think the short answer is no, unfortunately. It should, it absolutely should. But now, and, I think the evidence splls that out, we still have a massive employment gap. disabled people are not getting jobs they re applied for. We still have discrimination in every walk of life. So the short answer is no, whether you're looking at the statute or whether you're looking at the system, and the process.

Jen Ang: And finally, some of our guests turned from thinking about the law as it is made in parliaments, or the failures of the law to achieve the aims of legislation, to the actual physical and emotional experience of people as they become subjects of the legal system by being.

Jen Ang: Drawn into a legal process or as they encounter the court system. Let's start with this recent example from Davie Donaldson, a, leading Traveller rights activist. Davie describes in this longer excerpt his attempts to bridge the disconnect between a bureaucratic court system and a bewildered

Traveller family who are pursued by a Scottish local council in an attempt to prevent them from settling on their ancestral lands.

Davie Donaldson: I mean, we're d again, right? I mean, my work, since I've been about 15, has been trying to disentangle and navigate paths that were never built for gypsy travellers. Right. infrastructures that were always built for settled populations and settled people, are inherently difficult for gypsy travellers to navigate for a number of reasons. But when it comes to the legal system and the law, that task just becomes mammoth. I think as well, it's important to recognise that for gypsy travellers, the law has always been weaponized in Scotland. I mean, you can go right back to the early 1500s and see some of the first anti gypsy legislation being brought into play. And from that point onwards, the law has always been seen by settled communities, particularly settled authorities, who don't want a gypsy, traveller or nomadic people to exist. At times, the law has been their tool in which to curtail that. And so for gypsy Traveller, it's always been this David and Goliath battle, since the very start of their, I guess, experience with our modern law system and its foundations. For me, my experience has been trying to navigate that both as an individual but also as an advocate for communities. Right. And what that often means is trying to, trying to take Worden from this really alien, alien, educated environment to the laymen, to the local kind of communities who perhaps have had very limited education, certainly not third, second and third levels of education, but also trying to think about, well, where is the law? Trying to confuse communities? Because oftentimes when they bring me in, it's we've received this document and we don't know what it means or we've received the citation and we have no idea what that means. I mean only recently let. To give you an example, last week I was contacted by a family, who were travelling. It's, also important to notice that for gypsy travellers experience with the law and with the justice system, it tends to be at these, what could be called conflict points. Regularly. Those are experienced as gypsy travellers travelling. and because we don't own the land in which we travel, oftentimes it leads to, evictions. And evictions are kind of the key, trigger point for our experience with the justice system. So I was contacted by this family who were travelling, they stopped on, ah, a disused airfield and they'd stopped at 8 o'clock at night. They pulled onto this airfield and by 3 o'clock the next day they'd received a, ah, Supreme Court of Session document outlining that they were to be, evicted with immediate enforcement. And they had 24 hours to respond to this, this written enforcement letter, which was about 15 pages long, that they had to respond in the form of answers to the Court of Session, which also meant that unless they were able to appoint a solicitor between 3:00 and 5:00 that day, and this solicitor was to be able to read over this document and be able to submit answers on their behalf, they were going to have to put the answers into the Court of Session by hand delivery. Now you can imagine the mammoth task that that would be for anyone, but particularly for this family, it's important to notice that they'd just been evicted from an industrial estate. All of their ancestral camps in the area had been blocked off. And so they had a number of young children, we had elderly people, a number of disabilities present on the camp as well. And so for this family it was really important perhaps more than others to be able to be in a very safe location. A number of their children had quite severe autism so they couldn't stop at the side of the road because of the worry of traffic and the burns need in space. Right. So they were beside themselves, so worried they had no idea what this meant. All they knew is that the letter threatened sheriff Officer action where their vehicles would be tor away, where their caravans would be removed from the site, where police enforcement might happen. So they were terrified. So they contacted me, they sent me photographs of the citation. that evening I did my best to read through it from the kind of garbled photos, and then we together pulled together some answers and I then drove from the north of Scotland to Edinburgh to hand deliver it to the court session. Now when I got to the court session I was immediately faced with a security barrier. I'd got there, at 1:00 I had to go up to the, off the, the main office to speak to the reception and say look, I need to go to the court session and hand this document. And they say o, well I'm sorry but the court sessions on its lunch break so you won't be able to get down there until 2:00. I said okay. And they said but you can wait. So I sat down and I waited for the hour and in that time of waiting and this is why I mentioned this, what might seem quite an, I guess an insignificant part of the story. But waiting is something that is highly triggering for gypsy traveller communities because waiting, particularly in a formal environment like a court or even just in an office building, it triggers all of those drove juvenile memories of being excluded at school, of being made to feel different, of dealing with the justice system in a way that's inherently andust. And so even for me, I guess I'm used to dealing with professional folk and police and social services and so on but nonetheless waiting in that moment was highly triggering. I felt my anxiety peaking, I felt my heart rate going and at moments I wanted to walk out, right, I wanted to leave that building. I didn't want to be there anymore in this really structured environment that was, felt like the walls were closing in on every side. Eventually I got through and we got through the barrier, went down to the, the office. When I got there I handed the document to the reception. They said right, we need to check this. So then another period of waiting. So I then had to wait for another hour. By that stage, one of their office staff had had the document reviewed and checked by some seniors. They came back and they said, right, have you contacted the solicitor? And I said no, because I know the name of the solicitor but it's a big multinationational kind of firm. But, I don't know the name of the individual solicitor who's dealing with the case. I wasn't given any contact details because the interlocr that we'd been given missed out a lot of the appendices. So we weren't given all the information that the court session had been given. We weren't given contact details for theter firm. Instead we were just given the formal address of the courte session. So the admin said, well you have to speak to the solicitor. we can't accept these as answers because they're not in appropriate format. I said, right, okay, but what, what is the appropriate format? I can't tell you that. He said, you know, you can hand these in online. I said I can't because I'm not a solicitor. He was said, ah, okay, in what capacity are you acting with the occupiers? Now I knew before going there I couldn't do anything that would imply was a solicitor because then I'd be breaking the law. So I was very, very careful. But then I also wanted to ensure that it was clear that the document had been written with the occupiers and therefore that these families, you know, they weren't having something placed on them, but they'd actually written this document alongside me, albeit with some support around, you know, their rights and legislation and so on. And I said, well I'm an advocate so I'm just wanting to help the families get their voices heard. Ah, but you have to be acting in some capacity. What capacity? And I said I knew I could admit that I had no idea what he was asking but at the m same time I was terrified to do anything which might get me in hot water. So I think he eventually realised this. He said look, I would go to the solicitor's office. So I left there, I drove to the headquarters of the solicitors, went in. Of course I had no idea what solicitor I was asking for. I had no case reference or anything like that. I just had this legal document and I just handed it to someone and I said, look, I said I really hope this counts as within the 24 hour period because otherwise these families are facing eviction to, you know, to nowhere, there's nowhere for them to go. Eventually I got an email back from the solicitors and they said they would consider the position, because there was clear evidence that there would be a breach of public sector equ quality duties. There was clear evidence of, there was no eqia, no equalities in human rights impact assessment had been carried out. It was impossible for it to have been carried out in that time period anyway, so there was significant concerns because it was a public authority who was doing the enforcement. So I then went back that night, drove up to the northeast of Scotland, went to visit the families, showed them, told them what had happened, gave them a hand copy of the letter and so on for their records. And, when I was speaking to them, they said, I don't know what all the problems about. There's no mess, there's no antisocial behaviour, there's been no complaints. All we want is somewhere safe for our kids to stay. And I think that one example shows you just the David and Goliath task that often exists for families.

Jen Ang: Davie described earlier his own anxiety whilst waiting in the court of session to be seen rooted in his own experiences with places of formal authority. And he goes on to describe the impact for the families he works with of encounters like these with the legal justice system.

Davie Donaldson: Many of the families that I work with have low rates of literacy. they have an absolute fear of the justice system. So if they're ever given anything formal, their minds immediately go to what will happen to my children? Will social services get involved? Will my children be removed? What will happen to me? Will I end up in prison? You know, there's such a lack of information around the rights of gypsy travellers within the community. But there's also this predetermination of, well, they're going to find it wrong against me anyway, so what's the point, you know? So it is a difficult situation.

Jen Ang: And finally, I'd like to return to Pheona Matovu, whose opening reflections we listen to at the start of the podcast. She asks us whether the law, as we know it and define it, is even the right place to start as a way for humanity to deal with the deep, disturbing and diffic problems we bring to our courts. And her questions gently urge us to consider whether the law can ever treat us equally and whether as a two, it can be wielded with humanity.

Pheona Matovu: So I have worked, over a period of, 17 years with, people who seek refuge and who sik asylum and, one of the elements around asylum seeking. Of course we know that the convention expects that people should be protected if they'seeking asylum. However, what we know is that when people are seeking asylum, they are expected to go to court, to present their case, because the law stipulates that they have to present a case. But when you think about people who were presenting the case, they are already, operating from a position of being disempowered just by putting them in a position where they have to express themselves by law rather than express themselves by the experiences that they have. What does that do to society? What does that teach us? That asylum seekers or people who are seeking asylum. I don't even like the language asylum seekers, but people who are seeking asylum, it says to us that they should be dealt with by the law, when in fact we should be dealing with them, on the basis of humanity and dignity. And so if you even begin to question that, then people, of course, will respond with the law. This is what the law stipulates, this is what you should do. But is that what we want for humanity? So, in that regard, with that, just one example, I could spend a whole day giving you examples here, you know that. But for me, that is painful. it's critical that we rethink. Why would you put somebody who is going to tell their story of perhaps by having been raped, having been bitaten, having been, damaged by war, to actually go into the courts to express themselves and be judged by law? How can you judge a situation so dire with the law?

Jen Ang: And that concludes today's episode in which a number of prominent Scottish activists sat.

Jen Ang: Down to talk to us about our.

Jen Ang: First big question does the law treat you and your community equally across the board? Our guests said, no, the law does not treat us equally. And they told us exactly why they thought that. Some people asked whether it makes sense to speak about the law as separate from political, economic and cultural forces. For them, the legal system is a reflection of systemic inequality, which is either intentional or due to an oversight. A, failure to think about equity in designing the law and a, failure to include or involve communities in designing who would be most adversely impacted by it. That was m. Never a requirement to be met in developing the law. And by and large it still isn't. Although there are strong moral and principled arguments and some legal arguments in favour of doing so. What does it mean? Some of the guests ask that we allow there to be such a wide gulf between those who make the law and those who experience its impacts. And there are so few ways of bridging that divide. Some of our participants reflected that they had seen progress towards equality under the law, but others looking to outcomes pointed.

Jen Ang: Out that whilst we may have seen progressive modernisation of our legislation, the laws passed by parliaments, we are not seeing real change on the ground for excluded and discriminated against groups, including disabled communities, racialized communities, nomadic peoples and of course trans and non binary people. We heard a few different perspectives on how triggering and traumatic interactions with the formal court systems can feel and ended this episode with a poignant question, can the law ever treat us equally and can it as a tool ever be wielded with humanity? Big questions and I'd love to hear what you, our listeners make of it all. Meanwhile, a very big thank you to Pheona Matovu Satwat Rehman Pinar Aksu Talat Yaqoob Tim Hopkins, Sandy Brindley, Tressa Burke, Heather Fiskin and Davie Donaldson for their contributions to today's episode.

Jen Ang: A big thank you to all my guests appearing on today's episode and thanks so much to you, the listener, for tuning into the lawmanate podcast and our special series on Equality under the law in Scotland. If you loved this podcast, please do hit the subscribe buttons and also like and share our episodes with friends and colleagues who might enjoy learning a little bit about how law really works in practise and how it can be used to make the world a better, brighter place. Our Equality under the Law series has been genuously supported by a grant from the Atlantic Fellows for Social and

Economic Equity hosted by the London School of Economics. The Lomanate podcast is co produced by me, your host Jen Ang, and by the brilliant and talent Natalia Uribe. And the music you've been listening to is Always on the Move by Musicians in Exile, a Glasgow based music project led by people seeking refuge in Scotland. thanks so much for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed listening and see you next time.