Building the constitution : the practice of constitutional interpretation in post-apartheid South Africa / James Fowkes.
2016
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Details
Author
Fowkes, James, 1984- author.
Title
Building the constitution : the practice of constitutional interpretation in post-apartheid South Africa / James Fowkes.
Imprint
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Description
1 online resource (xxi, 392 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
Series
Cambridge studies in constitutional law.
Summary
This revisionary perspective on South Africa's celebrated Constitutional Court draws on historical and empirical sources alongside conventional legal analysis to show how support from the African National Congress government and other political actors has underpinned the Court's landmark cases, which are often applauded too narrowly as merely judicial achievements. Standard accounts see the Court as overseer of a negotiated constitutional compromise and as the looked-to guardian of that constitution against the rising threat of the ANC. However, in reality South African successes have been built on broader and more admirable constitutional politics to a degree no previous account has described or acknowledged. The Court has responded to this context with a substantially consistent but widely misunderstood pattern of deference and intervention. Although a work in progress, this institutional self-understanding represents a powerful effort by an emerging court, as one constitutionally serious actor among others, to build a constitution.
Note
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 Feb 2017).
Location
WWW
Available in Other Form
Print version:
Linked Resources
Access provided by Berkeley Law Library.
Alternate Title
Cambridge Core.
Language
English
ISBN
9781316403853 ebook
9781107124097 (hardback)
9781107561151 (paperback)
9781107124097 (hardback)
9781107561151 (paperback)
Record Appears in
Monographs & Serials
Electronic Resources
Electronic Resources