Judicial Capacity in a Transforming Legal System
Abstract
Given the perennial problem of lack of access to justice; the fact that there was no shortage of superior court judges until 1994; the demands on court process which flow directly from transition to the constitutional democratic system; and the urgent and justified necessity for the demographic transformation of judicial personnel, two challenges to the capacity of the judicial system present themselves in South Africa: Enlarging the number of suitable candidates for judicial appointment to redress the former demographic imbalance; and developing the kind of skills among those appointed as judges to be able to respond with confidence across a wide range of often complex legal issues; and developing a theory of judicial deference which observes the separation of powers and preserves judicial independence. This paper explores these challenges, after setting out the socio-political context, as it impacts directly on their nature and scope, and the prospects of meeting them.
Debido al constante problema de la falta de acceso a la justicia, al hecho de que no hubo escasez de jueces de tribunales superiores hasta 1994, las demandas del proceso judicial que surgen directamente de la transición al sistema democrático constitucional, y la necesidad urgente y justificada de la transformación demográfica del personal judicial, el rendimiento judicial en Sudáfrica se encuentra con dos desafíos: Aumentar el número de candidatos aptos al nombramiento judicial para compensar el anterior desequilibrio demográfico y desarrollar en los jueces nombrados aquellas habilidades que les permitan responder con confianza a asuntos jurídicos a menudo complejos; y desarrollar una teoría de deferencia judicial que respete la separación de poderes y preserve la independencia judicial. Este artículo explora estos desafíos tras explicar el contexto sociopolítico, ya que éste afecta directamente a su naturaleza y alcance, y las probabilidades de que se superen.
DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3039518
Downloads
Downloads:
PDF 86
Downloads
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.
The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.
For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.
The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.
