The Long Arc of Equality Law

Thirty five acts passed by the Parliament of Ireland at Kilkenny in 1366 under Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, barring the English and Anglo Normans in Ireland from intermarrying or mixing with the native Irish; the statutes stayed on the books until repealed on 16 May 1983.

Royal assent on 27 May 1679 gave the centuries old writ of habeas corpus, traceable to Magna Carta, its first enforceable procedure, requiring courts to examine directly whether a prisoner's detention was actually lawful.

Signed by President Andrew Jackson on 28 May 1830 after the Senate passed it 28 to 19 and the House 101 to 97, authorizing the exchange of Native land in the southeast for land west of the Mississippi and setting in motion the forced relocation of more than 60,000 people known as the Trail of Tears.

Royal assent on 28 August 1833 abolished slavery across most of the British Empire through compensated emancipation, freeing roughly 800,000 people while explicitly excluding British India, where slavery was not addressed until the Indian Slavery Act 1843.

Enacted 9 April 1866 after Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto, the first time it had overridden a veto to pass major legislation, declaring all persons born in the United States citizens entitled to the same contract, property and legal rights as white citizens; its framers pushed its guarantees into the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified 1868.

First enacted 12 April 1876 by the Parliament of Canada, consolidating earlier colonial statutes to give the federal government broad authority over band governance and reserve lands, including the assimilationist enfranchisement rules and the legal basis for the residential school system it operated for over a century.

Signed 13 May 1888 by Princess Isabel acting as imperial regent, its two brief articles abolished slavery throughout the Empire of Brazil with no transition period and no compensation, making Brazil the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do so.

Passed by the Union of South Africa's parliament on 19 June 1913, restricting Black South Africans to owning or occupying land only within designated reserves initially covering roughly seven percent of the country, the foundational statute of South Africa's later land segregation.

Enacted by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935 as two measures, the Reich Citizenship Law restricting full citizenship to those of German blood and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour banning marriage between Jews and Germans, with supplementary decrees in November 1935 defining who was legally Jewish.

Assented to 22 June 1950, requiring every inhabitant of South Africa to be classified and registered by racial characteristics as part of apartheid; the parliament that had passed it repealed it 17 June 1991 by a vote of 178 to 38.

Enacted in 1950 and implemented from 30 March 1951, assigning each racial group in South Africa to its own residential and business zones and enabling mass forced removals, most infamously the 1955 destruction of Sophiatown, until its repeal in 1991.

Passed in 1953 and effective 1 January 1954, moving control of African education from provincial governments and mission churches to the national Department of Native Affairs; the minister who implemented it, Hendrik Verwoerd, argued publicly that Black pupils should not be taught skills raising expectations above manual labor.

Passed by India's Parliament on 18 May 1955, codifying marriage law for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs and introducing judicial divorce, including divorce by mutual consent, into a tradition that had not previously recognized it; it faced significant religious opposition over that change and over equal inheritance rights for daughters.

Given royal assent 8 November 1965 as the United Kingdom's first legislation against racial discrimination, barring refusal of access to hotels, restaurants, cinemas and public transport on grounds of race, though its narrow reach excluded employment and housing, gaps later closed by the Race Relations Acts of 1968 and 1976.

Signed 11 April 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson during the riots following Martin Luther King's assassination; its Titles VIII and IX, the Fair Housing Act, barred discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion and national origin, later extended to sex in 1974 and disability and familial status in 1988.

In force from 29 December 1975 alongside the Equal Pay Act 1970, making it unlawful in the United Kingdom to discriminate on grounds of sex or marital status in employment, education and services, and creating the Equal Opportunities Commission to enforce it, before its eventual consolidation into the Equality Act 2010.

Enacted 11 June 1975 by the Whitlam government, implementing Australia's obligations under the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by making racial discrimination unlawful in employment, housing and services and overriding conflicting state and territory law.

Given royal assent 16 December 1976, the first Australian law to legally recognize Aboriginal systems of land ownership, letting Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory claim land by traditional occupation and creating inalienable freehold title that cannot be sold or mortgaged, following a 1974 recommendation by Justice Edward Woodward.

Signed 26 July 1990 by President George H. W. Bush, extending protections comparable to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to people with disabilities and, unlike earlier civil rights law, requiring covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations; Congress broadened its definition of disability in 2008 after court rulings had narrowed it.

Received royal assent 9 November 1998 and took force 2 October 2000, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into United Kingdom domestic law and letting a person seek a remedy for a breach of a Convention right in a UK court without first petitioning Strasbourg.