Ted Laros: Literature and the Law in South Africa, 1910-2010 (2017) @Cultuur_OU @rowmanandlittlefield

Ted Laros, Open University of the Netherlands, has published Literature and the Law in South Africa, 1910–2010: The Long Walk to Artistic Freedom (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

In 1994, artistic freedom pertaining inter alia to literature was enshrined in the South African Constitution. Clearly, the establishment of this right was long overdue compared to other nations within the Commonwealth. Indeed, the legal framework and practices regarding the regulation of literature that were introduced following the nation’s transition to a non-racial democracy seemed to form a decisive turning point in the history of South African censorship of literature. This study employs a historical sociological point of view to describe how the nation’s emerging literary field helped pave the way for the constitutional entrenchment of this right in 1994. On the basis of institutional and poetological analyses of all the legal trials concerning literature that were held in South Africa during the period 1910–2010, it describes how the battles fought in and around the courts between literary, judicial and executive elites eventually led to a constitutional exceptio artis for literature. As the South African judiciary displayed an ongoing orientation towards both English and American law in this period, the analyses are firmly placed in the context of developments occurring concurrently in these two legal systems.

 

Two South African Leaders: Nelson Mandela and Arthur Chaskalson

Stphen Ellmann, New York Law School, has published Two South African Men of the Law at 28 Temple International & Comparative Law Journal 431 (2014). Here is the abstract.

This essay remembers two great South African lawyers, Nelson Mandela, who became post-apartheid South Africa’s first President, and Arthur Chaskalson, the man whom Mandela chose to head the country’s new Constitutional Court. Both men’s lives, remarkable in themselves, also help us to understand what it means to be a “man of the law.” Mandela was a revolutionary and a lawbreaker, but he was also a lawyer who was never disbarred despite being imprisoned for almost three decades – and in fact his life turns out to exemplify a faith in law: not a naïve notion that apartheid law was just, but a deep commitment to the importance and value of just law. Arthur Chaskalson, for his part, was a leader of the South African bar who used South African law against itself in the struggle against apartheid. He too believed in law, but again not in a naïve way: he did not imagine that law would end apartheid, but he knew that South African law still contained elements of justice, and he used those elements to contribute to apartheid’s dissolution and to help build the legal order of the new South Africa. Both Mandela and Chaskalson were lawyer-statesmen, to use Anthony Kronman’s phrase, but their lives teach us that lawyer-statesmen are not always people who exchange moral certainty for wisdom and forbearance, as Kronman’s account seems to suggest. Different times call for different kinds of statesmen and stateswomen, and Nelson Mandela and Arthur Chaskalson brought to their lifelong struggle against searing injustice deep fidelity to law, but also political passion and radical conviction.

Download the abstract from SSRN at the link.

Nelson Mandela: The Lawyer's Lawyer

Justin Hansford, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published Nelson Mandela: The Lawyer as Agent for Social Change as a Saint Louis University Legal Studies Research Paper. Here is the abstract.

On December 5, 2013, a preeminently honorable man, perhaps the most admired in the world, passed away. That man was Nelson Mandela, and he was a lawyer.
Mandela’s surpassing prominence came not from writing a groundbreaking law review article, or from dazzling court watchers with a brilliant closing argument in a high profile trial (save the historic “speech from the dock” that he gave at his own). Mandela’s singular gift to civilization – his inspiration and leadership of South Africa’s peaceful transition from Apartheid rule to multi-racial, constitutional democracy – will not be known by most people as the provision of a “legal service.” Indeed, relatively few among the millions who revere Mandela will perceive the formidable legal mind at work behind his history-making achievements. But as much as anything, it was Mandela’s mastery of the lawyer’s art that enabled him to build a case that changed the world.

Mandela was a lawyer’s lawyer. And his story is a lesson to all that living the lawyer’s life, at its best, engenders the skills and character traits that can empower people to make a difference in their community, their nation, and beyond.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Call For Papers: Annual Meeting of Law & Society/Africa Law and Society

From Mark Kende, Drake University Law School:

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH NETWORK CALL FOR PAPERS:  AFRICA LAW AND SOCIETY (CRN 13)
              
The forthcoming Annual Meeting of Law & Society will be held in Minneapolis from May 29 to June 1.  The Africa CRN invites proposals for panels (with submission of abstracts and a panel description), proposals for roundtables (with a description), proposals for Author Meets Reader events, or the submission of  independent papers related to Africa Law & Society issues.  Please list your event as being part of CRN 13 when you submit.  You should also consider whether other CRN’s may be interested in co-sponsoring.  The deadline for submissions to the conference is Tuesday, October 15, 2013.   All submissions must comply with Law & Society rules:  http://www.lawandsociety.org/minneapolis2014/2014proposals.html    No time extensions will be allowed.
 If you have an independent paper that you would like the Africa CRN to try to match with a panel or would like the CRN’s assistance in organizing a panel or roundtable, please e-mail your paper or panel/roundtable proposal to Professor Brian Ray at b.e.ray@csuohio.edu by 5 p.m. eastern standard time on Monday October 7, 2013.
              
Among the numerous topics that could be addressed include:  the situation of women in African nations; customary law and traditions; the 20^th Anniversary of South African independence; religion in African nations; constitutionalism and human rights; problems and success in governance at the national, regional, and local levels; the rise of Chinese influence in the region as well as other foreign influence; corruption; freedom of the press; problems related to poverty and war; issues of health and medical care; judicial functioning; the legal profession; and many other areas.
 Herewith is a description of the Africa CRN: the research focus of this CRN is on African law and society.  Open to all, this CRN aims to investigate the variety of levels and methods through which African law and society are constituted and change.  Recent annual meetings of the LSA have demonstrated that the Law and Society Association’s full potential for scholarship by Africans or about African law and society has not been achieved.  Likewise, African scholarship falling broadly within the law and society or socio-legal studies intellectual tradition has not been as prominent as could be the case.  Working both within the LSA and Africa, this CRN aims to organize panels for LSA annual meetings in Minneapolis and beyond.  The CRN also aims to promote and facilitate participation in African-located law and society scholarship initiatives.  The CRN is also pursuing funding and holding an African Institute, based loosely on the model of the LSA’s Summer Institutes.  While the CRN is African rather than South African, this CRN will both recognize and critique the role that South Africa plays in African law and society and in its scholarship.
  P.S.  Apologies for any list duplication.  If you know of someone not on the list who might be interested, please pass this on.  Thanks.  Mark
   Professor Mark KendeJames Madison Chair in Constitutional LawDirector, Drake University Constitutional Law Center2507 University Ave., Des Moines, IA 50311515-271-3354, 515-271-1858 (fax)mark.kende@drake.edu Author, Constitutional Rights in Two Worlds:  South Africa and the United States (Cambridge Univ.), http://www.amazon.com/Constitutional-Rights-Two-Worlds-Africa/dp/product-description/0521171768SSRN sample papers:  http://ssrn.com/author=339761Center Web Site:  http://www.law.drake.edu/academics/conLaw/
 

The South African Constitutional Court Fifteen Years On

D. M. Davis, University of Cape Town, has published South African Constitutional Jurisprudence: The First Fifteen Years at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 285 (2010). Here is the abstract.

South Africa became a constitutional democracy in 1994. This article reviews the first 15 years of constitutional jurisprudence produced by the country's first Constitutional Court. While the court interpreted the Constitution to eradicate racist, sexist, and homophobic legislation and similar common law rules, it did little to promote a comprehensive transformation of the legal system and thus the patterns of distribution that were supported by the law. This is illustrated particularly in the area of social and economic rights. The conclusion is thus reached that the new legal foundations are insufficiently resilient to hold the weight of constitutional expectation.

The full text is not available from SSRN.