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Judge Esther Johanna Steyn

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Judge ES Steyn 3437

Capacity: Judge
First appointed as judge: January 2009 (KwaZulu-Natal High Court)
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White
Date of Birth: August 1962
Qualifications: B Iuris (1984) (UNISA), LLB (1992) (UWC), LLM (1999) (UCT)

Key judgments:

Candidate Bio | Updated February 2026:

Judge Esther Steyn is a judge of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court.

Born and bred on the other side of Cape Town’s infamous ‘boerewors curtain’ separating the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking northern suburbs and the English-speaking southern suburbs, Judge Esther Steyn spent most of her life within sight of Table Mountain and the breeze of the Two Oceans.

Judge Esther Steyn’s legal career spans 46 years, including 17 years on the bench following her appointment to the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in 2009. During her time on the bench, Judge Steyn has been an acting judge of the Electoral Court, an Acting Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal for periods starting in April 2025 until present, as well as two stints as Acting Deputy Judge President of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court. With all of this experience under her belt, she has set her sights on being appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Her career encompasses criminal litigation, academic scholarship, and judicial service. She has worked as a prosecutor, magistrate, lecturer, and judge, reflecting experience in both the practical and academic dimensions of the law.

She began her legal career in 1980 as a clerk in the Department of Justice, later serving as District Court Prosecutor (1984–1986) and District Court Magistrate beginning in 1987. After three years on the bench, she returned to prosecution as Senior Prosecutor in the Goodwood and Wynberg criminal courts (1991–1995).

In 1996, she joined the University of Cape Town as Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice, teaching Criminal Law, the Law of Evidence, and Criminology. In her teaching, she emphasised the importance of practical experience, encouraging law students to engage directly with criminal courts in order to understand the social context of crime, including the race and gender dynamics that shape the experiences of victims and accused persons alike.

Throughout her academic career, she also published works on criminal justice and human rights, including pre-trial detention, trial delays, and constitutional rights to liberty, and co-authored work with her mentor, criminologist Professor Dirk van Zyl Smit.

In addition to her academic responsibilities, she served as an assessor in criminal trials (1996– 2002), on a task team investigating People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) related vigilante murders, and as a member of the Jali Commission into corruption, maladministration, violence, and intimidation in the Department of Correctional Services (2002–2005).

After joining the Aspirant Women Judges Program in 2007, Steyn took several stints as an acting judge in the Western and Northern Cape High Courts before her permanent appointment to the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in 2009.

Alongside two senior judges on the KwaZulu-Natal High Court, Steyn decided State v. Zuma (2019), in which former President Jacob Zuma sought a permanent stay of his fraud, corruption, and money-laundering prosecution, alleging prosecutorial impropriety and political bias. The court dismissed the application, highlighting the seriousness of Zuma’s offences and explaining that even if Zuma’s claims were true, they were “not aimed at the merits of the case,” and the prosecution remained justified because there were “reasonable and probable grounds” for prosecuting him.

In one of Steyn’s most notable judgments, CMC Woodworking Machinery, she held that Facebook may constitute an acceptable form of substituted service, noting that technology has evolved significantly and it “was not unreasonable to expect the law to recognise such changes and accommodate them.” The judgment reflects a tech-forward approach to substituted service and drew significant attention from the legal community, including coverage in the Stellenbosch Law Review, Tydskrif vir die Suid-Afrikaanse Reg, and Tech4Law.

More recently, in Mchunu and Another v. State, Steyn set aside two appellants’ convictions for robbery and murder after finding that their confessions to police were inadmissible because the officers had failed to properly uphold and protect their constitutional rights. Although she acknowledged the current state of crime in South Africa, Steyn nonetheless set aside the convictions, reaffirming the fundamental importance of constitutional protections for the accused.

According to Steyn, her most significant contributions to the law extend beyond individual rulings to the daily work of being a judge in South Africa’s democratic order. She has also focused on mentoring acting judges, contributing to judicial training, and teaching university students, instilling in them an understanding that the law does not operate in isolation and that legal practitioners are part of the broader South African society. Throughout her career, Steyn has demonstrated a commitment to the law, judicial service, and legal education, with contributions that have shaped both practice and scholarship in South Africa.

 

April 2026 Interview

Following deliberations, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has decided that it will not recommend Judge Esther Johanna Sophia Steyn for a position on the Supreme Court of Appeal. Judge Steyn’s interview was unsuccessful. She was not nominated for appointment.

October 2022 Interview

October 2022 JSC interview of Judge Esther Johanna Sophia Steyn for the position of Judge President of the KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court. Judge Steyn’s application was unsuccessful.