Jonathan Sumption served as an adviser to Keith Joseph. Sumption and Joseph co-wrote a 1979 book, Equality, seeking to show that "no convincing arguments for an equal society have ever been advanced" and that "no such society has ever been successfully created". #LordSumption
Sumption said that an attempt to rapidly achieve gender equality in the Supreme Court through quotas or positive discrimination could end up discouraging male applicants and so "have appalling consequences for justice".
He has criticised the European Court of Human Rights. He has compared the values of the ECHR and those of the post-war dictatorships of eastern Europe, stating that "they both employ the concept of democracy as a generalised term of approval for a set of political values".