Constitutional Adjudication In Africa

Since the 1990 wave of constitutional reforms in Africa, the role of constitutional courts or courts exercising the power to interpret and apply constitutions have become a critical aspect to the on-going process of constitutional construction, reconstruction, and maintenance. These developments appear, at least from the texts of the revised or new constitutions, to have resulted in fundamental changes in the nature and role of courts exercising jurisdiction in constitutional matters. The chapters in this second volume of the Stellenbosch Handbooks in African Constitutional Law series are the first to undertake a critical and comparative examination of the interplay of the diverse forms of constitutional review models on the continent. Comparative analysis is particularly important given the fact that over the last two decades, constitutional courts in Africa have been asked to decide a litany of hotly-contested and often sensitive disputes of a social, political, and economic nature. As the list of areas in which these courts have intervened has grown, so too have their powers, actual or potential. By identifying and examining the different models of constitutional review adopted, these chapters consider the extent to which these courts are contributing to enhancing constitutionalism and respect for the rule of law on the continent. The chapters show how the long-standing negative image of African courts is slowly changing. The courts have in responded in different ways to the variety of constraints, incentives, and opportunities that have been provided by the constitutional reforms of the last two decades to act as the bulwark against authoritarianism, and this provides a rich field for analysis, filling an important gap in the literature of contemporary comparative constitutional adjudication.

Drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary resources, this scholarly work provides an in-depth and thorough analysis of the socio-economic rights jurisprudence of the newly democratic South Africa. The book explores how the judicial interpretation and enforcement of socio-economic rights can be more responsive to the conditions of systemic poverty and inequality characterising South African society. Based on meticulous research, the work marries legal analysis with perspectives from political philosophy and democratic theory.

Over the last 25 years, the doctrine of separation of powers has been established as both a foundational value and a structural principle applied by the courts in interpreting the relationship between South Africa’s constitutional structures. Jurisprudentially, the practicalities and contours of how, when and by whom the separation of powers should be determined has proven to be controversial. Therefore, the past decade has been characterised by heightened political contestation, often resulting in extensive litigation posing thorny political issues. This has had profound implications for the judiciary and raised difficult questions on the very nature of South African constitutionalism. These political contestations gathered even greater momentum and urgency during the early days of COVID-19 in 2020, when the first iteration of this book was produced as a special issue of the South African Journal on Human Rights. This timely volume brings together critical reflections on developments in South Africa’s separation of powers jurisprudence and theory, the role and function of the judiciary through its judgments in shaping the landscape of constitutional politics, as well the implications of this for the consolidation of South Africa’s democratic constitutional project. It makes an important contribution to the debate on the politics of constitutional adjudication in light of the doctrine of separation of powers. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of politics, history, law and legal theory, human rights, and African studies.

A Theory of African Constitutionalism asks and seeks to answer why we need a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism and how this could offer us better theoretical and practical tools with which to understand, improve, and assess African constitutionalism on its own terms. By locating constitutional studies in Africa within the experiences, interactions, and contestations of power and governance beginning in precolonial times, the book presents the development and transformation of African constitutional systems across time and place, along with the attendant constitutional designs and practices ranging from the nature and operation of the African state to its vertical and horizontal government structures, to its constitutional rights regime. This title offers both a theoretically and comparatively rich, historically and contextually informed, and temporally and spatially extensive account of the nature, travails, and incremental successes of African constitutionalism with detailed case studies from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa. A Theory of African Constitutionalism provides scholars, policymakers, governments, and constitution builders in Africa and beyond with new insights for reimagining the purpose, substance, and scope of constitutions and constitutionalism.

In our globalized era it has become impossible to deal effectively with constitutional law and related subjects such as fundamental rights, administrative law and political science without knowledge of foreign systems. A wealth of literature is available on practically all constitutional systems and the intricacies of their application. This, however, presents the constitutionalist with a formidable problem: Which foreign systems should I explore in order to make relevant comparisons, and how should I go about it? This book addresses the core problems of comparability and appropriate comparative methodology in the realm of contemporary constitutionalism. The outcome is, however, not mere theorizing. Most of the text is devoted to an incisive application of the chosen comparative method to four geographically, historically, and culturally divergent, but thoroughly comparable, constitutional systems. In the course of the comparative exercise, contemporary constitutional dogma and constitutional mechanics are analyzed and explained, in many instances in their historical contexts, making the book itself a useful source of comparative and historical information.

This book uses empirical analysis to show that courts refrain from using the proportionality test as a means of judicial activism.

Constitutional Deference, Courts and Socio-Economic Rights in South Africaby Kirsty McLean2009ISBN: 978-0-9814124-8-1Pages: viii 246Print version: AvailableElectronic version: Free PDF available.