The Grassini Grimaldi Model of Institutional Filtering

This paper introduces the Grassini Grimaldi Model of Institutional Filtering, a theoretical framework explaining how contemporary institutions maintain formal compliance with equality legislation while producing exclusionary outcomes through administrative architecture. Drawing on disability discrimination proceedings in UK doctoral admissions, the paper identifies six interacting mechanisms: procedural gatekeeping, administrative neutrality, institutional time compression, the fiction of enforceable rights, spike profile exclusion, and epistemic narrowing. The analysis demonstrates how exclusion occurs prior to academic evaluation, how administrative language substitutes for statutory reasoning, and how enforcement failures render legal protections functionally inaccessible. The paper contributes to critical disability studies, institutional sociology, and the philosophy of law by providing a structural account of institutional compliance without substantive justice. Intellectual Property Notice Giulia Assistant® is a registered trade mark of Alessandro Grassini Grimaldi in the United Kingdom under number UK00004298171, with legal protection effective from 20 November 2025. The Giulia System® and the Equilibrium Ledger® form part of the same research and governance architecture. No part of this framework may be reproduced or implemented without appropriate attribution.