Fifteen years after the adoption of the 1997 Constitution, a live debate has emerged in South Africa about the role of the judiciary. This week the Government published a Discussion Document on the Transformation of the Judicial System and the Role of the Judiciary in the Developmental South African State. The developmental language returns to
Let’s say you’re a newly democratizing country – say, Egypt – in the market for a new constitution. What constitutions, if any, should you consider as models in drafting your own? According to Justice Ginsburg, the answer is, maybe Canada or South Africa, or constitutions written after World War II more generally. But … not
Mila Versteeg and I have just posted to SSRN a paper that might be of interest to readers of this blog entitled “The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution“. It follows up on an earlier article, imminently forthcoming in the California Law Review, in which we took a very bird’s eye view of the
For comparativists, South Africa is a gold mine. It offers comparative law scholars a rich repository of judgments that often develop in exquisite detail instructive comparisons between and among states. Of course, this is not a matter of happenstance. South Africa’s constitutional text actually commands courts to compare in some instances and also invites courts
In Road Accident Fund and Another v Mdeyide (CCT 10/10) [2010] ZACC 18 (30 September 2010) the South African Constitutional Court upheld an appeal against the high court’s declaration that the time-bar provision contained in the legislation regulating the affairs of the Road Accident Fund was unconstitutional. The time-bar clause under scrutiny stipulates that claims
The Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa in The Curators Ad Litem To Certain Potential Beneficiaries of the Emma Smith Educational Fund v The University of Kwa Zulu Natal [2010] ZASCA 136 (1st October 2010) dismissed an appeal against a judgment that set aside a racially restrictive clause limiting the beneficiaries of the Emma
Today, President Zuma announced that Justice Sandile Ngcobo will become the new Chief Justice of South Africa. The appointment is potentially significant in both: (1) what it says about Zuma’s commitment to judicial independence; and (2) what it signals about the likely direction of the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence, at least over the next two years,
Today, President Zuma announced that Justice Sandile Ngcobo will be become the third Chief Justice of a democratic South Africa. The appointment is potentially significance in both: (1) what it says about Zuma’s commitment to judicial independence; and (2) what it signals about the likely direction of the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence, at least over the
Welcome to I·CONnect: the blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law.
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Welcome message from Tom Ginsburg
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