IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v8y1996i2p177-191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The 1993 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa - The Constitutional Court

Author

Listed:
  • Kierin O'Malley

Abstract

The South African interim constitution (Act 200 of 1993) provides inter alia for a supposedly independent Constitutional Court which is mandated to act as the guardian of the post-apartheid constitutional dispensation. This Court is granted extensive powers of judicial review by the interim constitution. In an attempt to make a distinct break from the previous political and constitutional dispensation, a centralized constitutional court model has been chosen. This has been done in spite of the country's common-law tradition and a general preference for a decentralized model which existed in the early periods of the 1990-93 transition period. The appointment process spelt out in the interim constitution appears unlikely to guarantee a politically independent court. This is borne out by the initial composition of the court which is strongly biased in favour of the majority party in the Government of National Unity, the African National Congress. A high degree of judicial activism and the politicization of the court and South African constitutional law appears likely.

Suggested Citation

  • Kierin O'Malley, 1996. "The 1993 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa - The Constitutional Court," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 8(2), pages 177-191, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:8:y:1996:i:2:p:177-191
    DOI: 10.1177/0951692896008002004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692896008002004
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951692896008002004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cameron, Robert, 2012. "Vertical Decentralization and Urban Service Delivery in South Africa: Does Politics Matter?," WIDER Working Paper Series 087, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Inman, Robert P. & Rubinfeld, Daniel, 2009. "Federalism and South Africa's Democratic Bargain: The Zuma Challenge," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt6239g0gb, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    3. Cecile Gerwel Proches & Shamim Bodhanya & Stan Hardman, 2012. "The Challenges of Service Provision and Economic Development in South Africa," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 14(Special N), pages 580-599, November.
    4. K K Govender & N.Z Hlatshwayo, 2015. "Monitoring and Evaluation in the Public Sector: A Case Study of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform in South Africa," Asian Journal of Economics and Empirical Research, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 2(2), pages 91-99.
    5. Timothy Hinks, 2012. "Fractionalization and well-being: Evidence from a new South African data set," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(3), pages 253-271, December.
    6. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-87 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Ruth Hall, 2004. "A Political economy of land reform in South Africa," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(100), pages 213-227, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:8:y:1996:i:2:p:177-191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.