Quote of the week
An ‘important purpose of section 34 [of the Constitution] is to guarantee the protection of the judicial process to persons who have disputes that can be resolved by law’ and that the right of access to court is ‘foundational to the stability of an orderly society. It ensures the peaceful, regulated and institutionalised mechanisms to resolve disputes, without resorting to self-help. The right of access to court is a bulwark against vigilantism, and the chaos and anarchy which it causes. Construed in this context of the rule of law and the principle against self-help in particular, access to court is indeed of cardinal importance’.The right guaranteed s34 would be rendered meaningless if court orders could be ignored with impunity:the underlying purposes of the right — and particularly that of avoidance of self-help — would be undermined if litigants could decide which orders they wished to obey and which they wished to ignore.
Victoria Park Ratepayers' Association v Greyvenouw CC and others (511/03) [2003] ZAECHC 19 (11 April 2003)
Claude Leon Foundation LLM Scholarship (UCT), 2015
Claude Leon Foundation Scholarship in Constitutional Governance
Due to late withdrawal of one of the selected candidates, I have 1 LLM scholarships to the value of R80 000 available for a student intending to do a research LLM at UCT in 2015 in public law or related interdisciplinary field.
Prof Pierre de Vos, the Claude Leon Chair in Constitutional Governance at the University of Cape Town Law Faculty, invites suitably qualified applicants to submit applications for the above LLM scholarship. The successful applicant will be South African citizens who plans to embark on a Master’s degree by dissertation in 2015 in the fields of South African or comparative Human Rights Law, Constitutional Law or other legal and political questions relating to constitutional governance. Candidates who plan to do interdisciplinary research are also welcome. The dissertation will be supervised by the Chair in Constitutional Governance.
- The successful applicant will have an excellent academic record. In making the selection, the selection panel will take into account the need for scholarship holders broadly to represent South Africa’s racial and gender composition;
- The scholarship will be awarded for a period of one year;
- The selected scholar will be required to provide reasonable research assistance to the Chair in Constitutional Governance; and
- The selected scholar will be expected to be in residence at the University of Cape Town.
For further information contact: pierre.devos@uct.ac.za.
Applicants must send a covering letter, accompanied by a full curriculum vitae with the names and contact details of two referees, all available undergraduate degree transcripts and a short (no more than one page) proposal indicating the possible topic of the post-graduate research to: pierre.devos@uct.ac.za by no later than 21 October 2014.
