Jennifer Mary Marion

Capacity: Attorney
Admitted as an attorney: November 1995
Acting experience: Acting Judge, KwaZulu-Natal High Court (2022–2026); Acting Regional Magistrate, Pietermaritzburg (2010–2015); Member of the Tax Court (2017–2022)
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Indian
Date of Birth: February 1969
Qualifications: BA (1991) LLB (1995) LLM (2015) (University of KwaZulu-Natal)

Key Cases as Acting Judge and Instructing Attorney:

Candidate Biography | Updated August 2026:

Ms Jennifer Mary Marion is an attorney and partner at Pietermaritzburg-based law firm Anthoo, Marion and Associates.

She has spent more than thirty years as an attorney in Pietermaritzburg. If appointed, she would move from running her own firm to a permanent seat on the KwaZulu-Natal High Court bench.

Born in Pietermaritzburg, she began her journey as a part-time packer and teller at Checkers Cascades from 1988 to 1990 while studying. Ironically, she later served as the instructing attorney in Checkers Supermarket v Lindsay. This landmark case went to the Supreme Court of Appeal where it established the legal duty of care supermarkets owe to customers.

Marion took her BA and LLB at the University of Natal (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal) and later an LLM in advanced criminal justice. Her first taste of the law was as a student in the university’s legal-aid clinic, advising clients who could not afford an attorney, an experience she says awakened a lasting commitment to access to justice for the poor.

After graduating, Marion worked as a candidate attorney. She was admitted as an attorney in 1995 and built a broad general practice. She soon became a partner at Silvia Da Silva, Jennifer Anthoo & Associates. She proceeded to establish her own firm; Jennifer Anthoo and Associates. She now practises with her husband, Valentine Marion, at Anthoo, Marion & Associates, where she primarily handles civil litigation, criminal law, and family law.

Her work spans civil and criminal litigation, family law, labour disputes, estates, insolvencies and Road Accident Fund claims across the District and Regional Magistrates Court, and High Courts.

Marion has accumulated a variety of acting experience while in practise. She has served as an Acting Regional Magistrate in Pietermaritzburg for roughly five years; from 2010 to 2015. She was a member of the Tax Court for a five-year term, and in 2023 was selected for the national Aspirant Women Judges Programme. Between 2022 and 2026 she has acted as a judge of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court on eight occasions. While sitting in both civil and criminal courts, she has delivered judgments across a broad range of matters and accumulated 37 Weeks on the bench.

Her judicial approach is evident in Miya v Miya. In this case, an estate representative tried to evict the deceased’s son where the son lived on the family property. Marion refused to grant the eviction. She applied the constitutional principle of Ubuntu (humanity). She ruled that eviction was not just and equitable. Instead, she urged the family to seek mediation. She noted that courts must handle family disputes with grace.

In Maximum Profit Recovery, Marion tackled a complex procurement dispute. A municipality had awarded a major accounting tender. The tender required all directors to be chartered accountants. Marion found this requirement irrational. She held that it unfairly excluded qualified competitors. Consequently, she set aside the unlawful tender awards.

Beyond the courtroom, Marion has been a fixture of the profession’s leadership. She chaired the Pietermaritzburg branch of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL) from 2018 to 2026, sits on the KwaZulu-Natal Legal Practice Council’s disciplinary committees, and serves on the Legal Sector Charter Council.

She has devoted much of her energy to human-rights and gender-based-violence work, including as a board director of Esther House, a shelter for abused women and children.

Marion now seeks a permanent High Court appointment. She comes before the JSC as a seasoned attorney, with deep roots in her community and almost 40 weeks of acting experience already behind her and a long career in private practice. All of this will be under the spotlight, the JSC may probe her acting judicial experience and is likely to explore whether more than three decades in practice, and that acting record, have prepared her for the demands of a permanent appointment.

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