African Activist Archive

Paper by Justice J.M. Didcott at the Seminar on the Legal Aspects of Apartheid sponsored by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the American Bar Association's Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and its Standing Committee on World Order Under Law. The paper says that what lawyers in South Africa can do through the courts to promote the cause of justice, depends on what the South African courts themselves can do, which has substantial limitations. What opportunities do the South African courts have for doing justice and remedying injustice? And what is their record in taking those opportunities? South Africas legal profession is divided into two branches; there are now quite a number of black magistrates, but no black has ever been appointed to the Supreme Court bench. South African statutes are entirely to blame for both those features of the law that provide for racial discrimination and the racial inequality which flows from it and for stringent security laws that enable the resulting discontent to be controlled by means highly injurious to the civil liberties of all. The Parliament is sovereign under the South African constitution and the statutes duly passed by it have the full force of law, so the courts have no power to declare them invalid. The paper discusses Magistrate's Courts, civil servants, the judiciary, judges, advocates, attorneys, Professor Dugard, common law, a bill of rights, political power, black majority, white minority, prospects of a negotiated settlement, minority groups, racial origin, tribe, language, culture, religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and litigation.

African Activist Archive

The Role of The South African Judiciary

SEMINAR ON THE LEGAL ASPECTS OF APARTHEID

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