Postal address Private Bag x1 Matieland 7602 South Africa Physical address Corner of Rhyneveld and Victoria Street Stellenbosch Phone: +27 (0)21 808 4853 Fax: +27 (0)21 886 6235 E-mail: Ms Yolandi Sylvester - yolandi@sun.ac.za
Prof AJ van der Walt from the Department of Public Law was recently elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of SA. The Royal Society of SA was established in 1908 according to a royal charter and aims to promote academic and research activity in South Africa.
Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke delivers the annual human rights public lecture at the Stellenbosch University, Law Faculty
On 22 October Deputy Chief Justice Moseneke delivered the annual human rights public lecture hosted by the Stellenbosch University Law Faculty. The title of Justice Moseneke's address was Transformative Constitutionalism: Its Implications for the Law of Contract in South Africa. The lecture was attended by approximately 200 persons representing a cross-section of the bench, members of the bar and side-bar, civil society organisations and students.
In his address Justice Moseneke highlighted the imperative for all forms of power - whether public or private - to be subject to constitutional scrutiny and control. The Deputy Chief Justice recalled key moments in South Africa's history of contract when the courts dispatched equitable normative doctrines in the name of upholding sanctity of contract. He also drew attention to the paradox that despite rigorously holding public state organs to account for their constitutional obligations, the courts "have shown remarkable slowness, or perhaps reticence in allowing the fundamental rights or values of our constitution to influence the law of contract through direct or indirect horizontality".
The Deputy Chief Justice concluded his lecture by observing that "those who plead cases before court are themselves steeped in a tradition that seeks to preserve rather than innovate legal reasoning and rules particularly within the sphere of the common law. The result is that reliance on constitutional provisions is often half-hearted and an afterthought." These observations are of special relevance for legal academics and practitioners in South Africa. They challenge us to greater intellectual rigour in exploring the implications of constitutional rights and values for both public and private law, including areas such as the law of contract which have traditionally been immune from the influences of human rights law.
The Stellenbosch Law Faculty wishes to express their appreciation to Webber Wentzel for sponsoring the Annual Human Rights Lecture series of the Faculty.
You can retrieve Judge F Bam's lecture from here - Click here
Equity in the workplace: Reflections from South Africa and elsewhere
A highly successful conference that placed the Employment Equity Act under the spotlight was recently held at the Wallenberg Research Centre at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). Themed Equality in the Workplace - Reflections from South Africa and elsewhere, the conference was presented by the Centre for International and Comparative Labour and Social Security Law (CICLASS) at Stellenbosch University, in association with the Institute of Development and Labour Law (University of Cape Town) and the Social Law Project (University of the Western Cape).
A number of prominent experts in the field of equality addressed the conference. These included international experts such as Prof Sir Bob Hepple and Prof Sandra Fredman (both from the United Kingdom), Professors Manfred Weiss (Germany), Judy Fudge (Canada) and Kamala Sankaran (India). Local experts included Professors Cathi Albertyn (Wits Law School), CHarles Ngwena (University of the Free State) and Halton Cheadle (University of Cape Town). A number of judges also participated, including Judge Dennis Davis of the Cape High Court and Judge Dhaya Pillay of the Labour Court.
Transformative Constitutionalism after 10 Years
Ten years ago in an article published in the South African Journal on Human Rights, Prof Karl Klare - one of the leading lights in the critical legal studies movements - described the South African Constitution as a transformative document. By 'transformative constitutionalism' he meant: 'a long term project of constitutional enactment, interpretation, and enforcement committed (not in isolation, of course, but in a historical context of conducive political developments) to transforming a country's politicla and social institutions and power relationships in a democratic, participatory, and egalitarian direction. Transformative constitutionalism connotes an enterprise of inducing large-scale social change through non-violent political processes grounded in law'.
UK Africa Inter-University Partnership for Teaching and Research in Public Procurement Regulation project to be launched in 2009
A research grant of approximately £30 000 was made by the British Academy to Dr Geo Quinot of the Department of Public Law in partnership with the Public Procurement Research Group, University of Nottingham, under the leadership of Prof Sue Arrowsmith, an internationally renowned scholar in public procurement regulation (see www.nottingham.ac.uk/law/pprg). The award was made under the British Academy's UK-Africa Academic Partnerships scheme to Quinot and Arrowsmith as lead partners along with Prof Phoebe Bolton of UWC for a research project on public procurement regulation. In addition to Quinot, Arrowsmith and Bolton other members of the Public Procurement Research Group will also actively participate in the project. The project, initiated by Stellenbosch, will run for 3 years from 2009 and will focus on public procurement regulation in Southern Africa. It is the first such project in South Africa. The main objective of the project is to raise the academic profile of public procurement regulation in Southern Africa and includes research as well as teaching components.
Regarding research, the participants will investigate the current state of procurement regulation in Southern Africa. This investigation will serve as a foundation for the identification of procurement issues in need of further development in the region, which will form the subject matter of further research and publication. The project will thus serve as a pilot project for advanced research in public procurement regulation in Southern Africa drawing on the expertise developed at Nottingham. One important aspect of the project is consequently to identify more research partners from Africa to participate in further research. The project will support teaching development in public procurement regulation in the form of an undergraduate module at UWC and a postgraduate (LLM) module at Stellenbosch. It is envisaged that these modules will be implemented by 2011 in order to enhance local research capacity in public procurement regulation.
An important aspect of the project is that it will facilitate the participation of African scholars in the development of a permanent global Procurement Lawyers Academic Network that is currently being developed under the EU Asia Link programme (click here). This dimension of the project includes the creation of a web portal on the law faculty's website that will provide access to materials on public procurement regulation in Southern Africa and links to international sources in this field.
Launch of Stonehage First Year Scholarship Scheme
Committed to a strategic, equal partnership, the Stonehage Charitable Trust and the Stellenbosch Faculty of Law have announced the Stonehage First Year Scholarship Scheme. Twelve recruitment scholarships covering full tuition fees will be awarded to academically gifted students from previously disadvantaged communities registering as first year students for the BA (Law), BComm (Law), LLB or BAcc LLB programs in 2009. Each partner will contribute an amount of up to R120 000 on an annual basis. The Scheme represents a co-investment in the region of R240 000 annually to support the Faculty's recruitment effort and establish the Faculty as a destination of choice for academically strong aspirant law students from disadvantaged communities.
The Scheme is intended to match university funding to enhance the diversity profile of the Faculty's annual student intake. The aim is to attract academically gifted students, but also enhance the relationship between the University, the Faculty and the surrounding community. Preference will therefore be given to students from Bloemhof Girls High School, Kayamandi High School, Lückhoff High School, Paul Roos Gymnasium, Rhenish Girls High School and Stellenbosch High School.
The Stonehage Group, of which Mr Giuseppe Ciucci, a former student of the Faculty, is CEO, provides wealth management and fiduciary services to international families. The Group has over $25 billion worth of assets under administration and has offices in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Jersey, Israel, South Africa, the United States and Australia.
The Stonehage First Year Scholarship Scheme complements the significant financial assistance to senior students at the Faculty by the Stonehage Charitable Trust since 2001, which has since 2007 been formalised as Stonehage Group Scholarships. This has been done in collaboration with the Link-SA Fund for Tertiary Education, an organisation that enables persons and institutions with South African affiliations to contribute to the tertiary education of underprivileged students, many of whom were formerly disadvantaged. Of the 136 students funded by LINK-SA in 2007, 17, representing 12,5% of the total, were LLB students from the Law Faculty supported by the Stonehage Group.
17th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition Stellenbosch University, Faculty of Law participated again in the 17th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition, held in Pretoria from 30 June to 5 July. The team representing Stellenbosch was Matthew Clark (final year) and Carla Kriek (3rd year B.Com Law), chosen after two internal rounds of competition in March. They competed against 43 other English-speaking teams from all over Africa. Teams were assessed on four rounds of oral presentations, as well as written memorials. The Stellenbosch team came SECOND overall and their written memorials were also placed third. This is the best the team from Stellenbosch has ever done in this moot court competition, surpassing our 3rd place of 2005.
Amicus-fund The Amicus-fund is a bursary fund which was founded by alumni from the Faculty of Law. The fund recently received a donation of R500 000 from the Pola Pasvolvsky Trust. (The Pola Pasvolvsky Trust supports educational projects in South Africa.) The donation will be used for bursaries for SU Law Students with financial need, candidates from previously disadvantaged communities will receive preference. Individuals who wish to support the Fund or would like to learn more about the Fund's activities are welcome to contact Prof Jacques du Plessis at jedp@sun.ac.za.
Willem C Vis Moot Competition
Students from the Law Faculty of the University of Stellenbosch recently excelled again in the annual Willem C Vis Moot Arbitration Competition. The team consisted of Theo Broodryk, Michaela Lau, Zithe Oberholzer, Bernhard Vogts, Bernard Wessels and John Henry Jordaan, and was coached by Professor Mustaqeem De Gama and Mr Louw Kriegler. The team finished 34th overall amongst 220 universities and also qualified for the quarter-finals in the oral arguments category of the competition.
Held in Vienna Austria, the annual Willem C Vis Moot is the biggest and most prestigious commercial law moot competition in the world. Roughly 220 universities from worldwide (that is more than one thousand five hundred students) participate to argue from a Claimant’s and Respondent's perspective a complex factual scenario dealing with the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and procedural international arbitration issues. The proceedings are conducted as a real arbitration would be, and the panels presiding over the oral arguments consist of practicing attorneys and the leading academics in the fields of arbitration and international sales law.
Teams are expected to prepare written heads of argument for both the Claimant and Respondent in the fictional dispute. Once these memorandums have been submitted to the organizers of the competition, students prepare oral arguments for both parties to the dispute, which is presented to the arbitration panels in Vienna.
The University of Stellenbosch is steadily becoming a force to be reckoned with in this competition. In the past 4 years it has qualified 3 times for the quarter-finals of the oral competition and was ranked 25th (2005), 16th (2007) and 34th(2008) in the last 4 years. Even though the number of universities participating in this competition has increased from approximately 150 to 220 in the last 4 years, the University of Stellenbosch has maintained its reputation as one of the respected universities in the competition.
More importantly, participating in the competition allows law students to step out their academic comfort zone and to be confronted with the practical side of the law. Students gain invauluable experience in international sales law, the drafting of heads of argument. Students also get the opportunity to develop an international network with their peers as well as practitioners and academics in this particular field of law.
South African Research Chair in Property Law This research chair operates within the department of Public Law, Stellenbosch University and is sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology. It is administered by the National Research Foundation and Prof AJ van der Walt is the current holder of this chair. The functions of this chair focus on three main aims:
to realise the implications of the new constitutional dispensation on property law, especially constitutional property law and the theoretical foundation of Property Law
to realise the implications of these changes for the common law principles of property law
to commence with the training of potential property law lecturers and researchers within this new theoretical framework.
The following postgraduate students for the 2008 academic year conduct their research within this chair: 2 full-time LLD-students, 2 part-time LLD-students and 6 full-time LLM-students. 10 Final year LLB students also receive training and participate in research projects of this chair.
The chair will also offer various seminars and conferences through the 2008 academic year. The first planned for August 2008 when Prof Karl Klare from Northeastern University will visit the Chair.
Individual criminal liability for the international crime of aggression - LLD, Dr Gerhard Kemp The LLD degree was conferred on Dr Gerhard Kemp at the March 2008 graduation ceremony of the faculty of Law. This dissertation argues that the effective prosecution of individuals for the crime of aggression before the International Criminal Court (and before national courts) must be based on a proposed rational framework that accepts the doctrinal and constitutional prerequisites of the criminal justice approach whilst acknowledging the institutional, political, normative and historical foundations of the developing system of international criminal law.
The Judicial Regulation of State Commercial activity - LLD, Dr Geo Quinot The LLD degree was conferred on Dr Geo Quinot at the December 2007 graduation ceremony of the law faculty. His dissertation, completed under the supervision of Proff AJ van der Walt and GF Lubbe, is entitled "The Judicial Regulation of State Commercial Activity" and focuses on judicial approaches to the regulation of state commercial activity within the framework of constitutional transformation in South Africa. This study focuses on judicial approaches to the regulation of state commercial activity within the framework of constitutional transformation in South Africa. It argues that the current approach, which attempts to classify state action as either public or private in nature, is deficient. Analysis suggests that existing alternative approaches cannot adequately address the unique legal questions raised by state commercial activity. The study argues that the most promising way forward in fashioning an appropriate model to explain the judicial regulation of state commercial activity involves internalising the complexity of state commercial activity as social practice.
Former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson inspires law students
During the occasion of his visit to Stellenbosch University to receive an honorary LLD, former Chief Justice, Arthur Chaskalson delivered a guest lecture to law students in Constitutional Law. He took the students through the extraordinary developments that culminated in the final Constitution of 1996 and stressed the foundational importance of the values it embodies. Justice Chaskalson emphasised the sweeping impact of the Constitution on the entire body of South African law and reminded students that there is no area of law that is not fundamentally affected by it. He told students that this line of legal reasoning is still new to South Africa and that it is a younger generation of lawyers, such as themselves, that will have to consolidate constitutional law and thinking in South Africa. This, according to the former chief justice, places a tremendous responsibility on the shoulders of current law students of which they should be acutely aware from the earliest stages of their legal education and which they should embrace in every aspect of their training.
Picture: The Constitutional Law lecturers with Justice Chaskalson after his lecture (from left to right): Dr Geo Quinot; Prof Sandy Liebenberg; Justice Chaskalson and Prof Henk Botha.
