Quote of the week
Mr Zuma is no ordinary litigant. He is the former President of the Republic, who remains a public figure and continues to wield significant political influence, while acting as an example to his supporters… He has a great deal of power to incite others to similarly defy court orders because his actions and any consequences, or lack thereof, are being closely observed by the public. If his conduct is met with impunity, he will do significant damage to the rule of law. As this Court noted in Mamabolo, “[n]o one familiar with our history can be unaware of the very special need to preserve the integrity of the rule of law”. Mr Zuma is subject to the laws of the Republic. No person enjoys exclusion or exemption from the sovereignty of our laws… It would be antithetical to the value of accountability if those who once held high office are not bound by the law.
Secretary of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State v Zuma and Others (CCT 52/21) [2021] ZACC 18
DGRU judicial appointments database
The DGRU’s focus on judicial governance has led to it making available to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) research reports on candidates for judicial appointment, and to DGRU researchers attending, monitoring and commenting on the interviews of candidates for judicial appointment. Such reports have been complied for the September 2009, October 2010, April 2011, October 2011, April 2012, June 2012 and October 2012 interviews, as well as the Chief Justice’s interview in September 2011.
The intention of these reports continues to be to assist the JSC by providing an objective insight into the judicial records of the short-listed candidates. The reports are also intended to provide civil society and other interested stakeholders with a basis on which to assess candidates’ suitability for appointment to the bench.
The DGRU has recently created a database that contains all our reports
This database presents the DGRU’s reports on candidates for judicial appointments, which have been compiled for the Judicial Service Commission’s interviews since September 2009. The reports summarise candidate’s reported and unreported judgments.
The reports present the dates on which cases were heard, the dates on which judgments were delivered, and note subsequent upholding or overturning by appeal courts, where such information was available at the time the reports were complied.
The database allows the reports to be searched according to a candidate’s name, the provincial division to which they were applying to be appointed or in which they had delivered judgments, the name of a case, and the year in which the case was decided. It is possible to search under multiple categories simultaneously.
We hope that this database will make the results of our research easily accessible to anybody who may wish to research the track record of candidates for judicial appointments. The reports contain a sample of candidate’s judgments and are not intended to cover all the judgments a candidate has written.
The database can be found at http://www.dgrujudgements.co.za/
