| Building the Constitution: The Practice of Constitutional Interpretation in Post-Apartheid South Africa Contributor(s): Fowkes, James (Author) |
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ISBN: 1107124093 ISBN-13: 9781107124097 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $133.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Law | Constitutional |
| Dewey: 342.68 |
| LCCN: 2016026762 |
| Series: Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law |
| Physical Information: 0.94" H x 6" W x 9" (1.59 lbs) 416 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This revisionary perspective on South Africa's celebrated Constitutional Court draws on historical and empirical sources alongside conventional legal analysis to show how support from the African National Congress (ANC) government and other political actors has underpinned the Court's landmark cases, which are often applauded too narrowly as merely judicial achievements. Standard accounts see the Court as overseer of a negotiated constitutional compromise and as the looked-to guardian of that constitution against the rising threat of the ANC. However, in reality South African successes have been built on broader and more admirable constitutional politics to a degree no previous account has described or acknowledged. The Court has responded to this context with a substantially consistent but widely misunderstood pattern of deference and intervention. Although a work in progress, this institutional self-understanding represents a powerful effort by an emerging court, as one constitutionally serious actor among others, to build a constitution. |
Contributor Bio(s): Fowkes, James: - James Fowkes is a former clerk at the South African Constitutional Court and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and Yale Law School, Connecticut. He is currently a senior researcher at the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa, University of Pretoria. |
