Chief Justice Mogoeng occasionally laments the long, and what I understand as exhausting to peruse, judgments prepared by our Courts. I would like to suggest a focus on the length of judgments rather than their substance would be to risk a poorer justice being delivered to litigants and society as a whole. Of course, you […]
South Africa has a remarkably extensive civil society sector, ranging from small to large, complex organisations with sizeable staff and budgets. Before 1994, many organisations worked to end apartheid. In the post-apartheid era, some NGOs seem to have continued with the role of being watch dogs, playing oversight role on the government while others function […]
As part of our work and to create greater transparency around the judiciary and the JSC interviews, we write profiles and interview synopses of each of the candidates who are interviewed by the JSC. To give you some insight into some of the judicial candidates who appear before the JSC we’ve put together a list […]
Magistrate Conjwa was unwise in putting her name forward for consideration at the JSC in October. She had been castigated by the commission in a previous interview for having had a judgment outstanding for 14 months. She came back to the JSC for a second bite at the cherry, but unbelievably enough with another judgment […]
The opportunity not to do something is as important as the chance to do something. This JSC has chosen to step back on making appointments to two leadership positions in the Northern Cape and the North West. In both instances the interviews of the candidates left a clear trail of clues as to why the […]
In a finely balanced decision handed down on Thursday, 22 June 2017, by a unanimous bench, the Constitutional Court has found that it cannot direct the Speaker of the National Assembly, “to make all the necessary arrangements to ensure that the motion of no confidence . . . is decided by secret ballot, including designating […]
On Thursday, 6 April 2017, the Judicial Service Commission interviewed four candidates for the position of Judge President of the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court. The candidates were Judge M Makaula, Judge Z M Nhlangulela, Judge J E Smith, and Judge D Van Zyl. The current Judge President of the Eastern Cape, Themba […]
After Judge Mandisa Maya’s JSC interview for President of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) laid bare the racial and seniority divisions within the court, the interviews of Constitutional Court candidates – four of which are SCA judges – seemed to follow a similar theme of trying to examine and expose problems within the SCA. […]
Advocates being struck off the roll is the subject of some debate at the moment, and the question generally comes down to whether the person is ‘fit and proper.’ That sounds vague, but because the courts have spent time defining it, there are definitely circumstances where an individual can be deemed to be not fit […]
Sechaba Mohapi is a Law Researcher for the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa. He clarifies what is meant when the Supreme Court of Appeal uses the term ‘court below’ in their judgements; During interviews conducted by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) on 6 April 2016, for two vacancies on the Supreme Court of […]
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