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Dawood V Minister Of Home Affairs
''Dawood and Another v Minister of Home Affairs and Others; Shalabi and Another v Minister of Home Affairs and Others; Thomas and Another v Minister of Home Affairs and Others'' is an important decision in South African constitutional law and immigration law. It was delivered in the Constitutional Court of South Africa on 7 June 2000. In a unanimous judgment written by Justice Kate O'Regan, the court held that the constitutional right to dignity contained implicit protections for the right to family life and the institution of marriage. In particular, provisions of the Aliens Control Act, 1991 were found to be inconsistent with the right to dignity insofar as they permitted immigration officials wide discretion to refuse residence permits to the foreign spouses of South Africans, thereby undermining the ability of married couples to cohabitate. The court held that when Parliament grants government officials such powers and others that touch on constitutional rights, it must lay ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitutional Court Of South Africa
The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme court, supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction. The Court was first established by the South African Interim Constitution, Interim Constitution of 1993, and its first session began in February 1995. It has continued in existence under the Constitution of South Africa, Constitution of 1996. The Court sits in the city of Johannesburg. After initially occupying commercial offices in Braamfontein, it now sits in a purpose-built complex on Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, Constitution Hill. The first court session in the new complex was held in February 2004. Originally the final appellate court for constitutional matters, since the enactment of the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa, Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution in 2013, the Constitutional Court has jurisdiction to hear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Right To Family Life
The right to family life is the right of all individuals to have their established family life respected, and to have and maintain family relationships. This right is recognised in a variety of international human rights instruments, including Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Definition The changing concept of family requires a subjective definition of what family entails. There is no contest that the relationship between husband and wife, unmarried (de facto) partners, parents and children, siblings, and ‘near relatives’ such as between grandparents and grandchildren represents family as required under the right to family life. Challenge exists where modern forms of family relationships have developed that the law has not yet explicitly recognised. The “existence… of family life is a question of fact” and is decided subje ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Of Rights Of South Africa
Chapter Two of the Constitution of South Africa contains the Bill of Rights, a human rights charter that protects the civil, political and socio-economic rights of all people in South Africa. The rights in the Bill apply to all law, including the common law, and bind all branches of the government, including the national executive, Parliament, the judiciary, provincial governments, and municipal councils. Some provisions, such as those prohibiting unfair discrimination, also apply to the actions of private persons. South Africa's first bill of rights was drafted primarily by Kader Asmal and Albie Sachs in 1988 from Asmal's home in Dublin, Ireland. The text was eventually contained in Chapter 3 of the transitional Constitution of 1993, which was drawn up as part of the negotiations to end apartheid. This "interim Bill of Rights", which came into force on 27 April 1994 (the date of the first non-racial election), was largely limited to civil and political rights (negative ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rule Of Law
The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica'' as "the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power." The term ''rule of law'' is closely related to constitutionalism as well as ''Rechtsstaat'' and refers to a political situation, not to any specific legal rule. Use of the phrase can be traced to 16th-century Britain. In the following century, the Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford employed it in arguing against the divine right of kings. John Locke wrote that freedom in society means being subject only to laws made by a legislature that apply to everyone, with a person being otherwise free from both governmental and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Separation Of Powers
Separation of powers refers to the division of a state's government into branches, each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches. The typical division is into three branches: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary, which is sometimes called the model. It can be contrasted with the fusion of powers in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems where there can be overlap in membership and functions between different branches, especially the executive and legislative, although in most non-authoritarian jurisdictions, the judiciary almost never overlaps with the other branches, whether powers in the jurisdiction are separated or fused. The intention behind a system of separated powers is to prevent the concentration of power by providing for checks and balances. The separation of powers model is often imprecisely and metonymically used interchangeably with the ' principl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legal Resources Centre
The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) is a human rights organisation based in South Africa with offices in Johannesburg (including a Constitutional Litigation Unit), Cape Town, Durban and Grahamstown. It was founded in 1979 by a group of prominent South African lawyers, including Arthur Chaskalson, Felicia Kentridge, and Geoff Budlender, under the guidance of American civil rights lawyers Jack Greenberg and Michael Meltsner, then Director-Counsel and former First Assistant Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund respectively. The LRC is a generalist public interest law firm that engages in litigation and other activities across a wide range of focus areas, including the full range of rights in the Constitution of South Africa. The LRC has litigated many of South Africa's landmark human rights cases since its establishment, including major cases resisting apartheid injustices and cases under the new Constitution after 1994. These include S v Makwanyane' (abolishing the de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wim Trengove
Wim Trengove SC is a South African advocate best known for his role in the development of South African Constitutional jurisprudence and his involvement in high-profile political cases. Career Wim Trengove has litigated many of South Africa's most important human rights questions, including arguing for the successful abolition of the death penalty in ''S v Makwanyane'', arguing against discrimination on the basis of HIV status in ''Hoffmann v South African Airways'', arguing for the protection of sex workers' labour rights in ''Kylie v CCMA'', arguing for the restitution of land and mineral rights to groups dispossessed during apartheid in '' Alexkor Ltd v Richtersveld Community,'' and arguing for the roll-out of anti-retroviral treatment for HIV patients in ''Minister of Health v Treatment Action Campaign.'' Trengove also argued numerous constitutional questions in South Africa's Constitutional Court, including the certification of the constitution itself. Trengove also repre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belinda Van Heerden
Belinda Jane van Heerden (born 1953 or 1954) is a retired South African judge who served on the Supreme Court of Appeal between 2004 and 2013. Before that, she was a judge of the Western Cape High Court between 2000 and 2004. She also acted on the Constitutional Court in 2006. Van Heerden began her legal career as an academic with research interests in child law and family law. She worked as a professor of law at the University of Cape Town before she gained appointment to the bench. Early life and academic career Van Heerden was born in 1953 or 1954 and grew up in Somerset West in the Western Cape. She attended Stellenbosch University from 1977 to 1981, completing a BA in 1979 and an LLB in 1981. After that, she attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, completing a BA in jurisprudence in 1984. She spent the next five years as a lecturer in private law at Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town, until in 1989 she returned to Oxford to co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
