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)
LLM scholarships for 2016 at UCT Law Faculty
Claude Leon Foundation Scholarships in Constitutional Governance 2016
2 LLM scholarships (R80 000 each for 2016)
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 post-graduate scholarships. The successful applicants will be South African citizens who plan to embark on Master’s degree by dissertation in 2016 in the fields of South African or comparative Human Rights Law, Constitutional Law or other legal and political questions relating to constitutional governance, constitutionalism, rights discourse or the promotion of social justice – including topics that require interdisciplinary research. The dissertations will be supervised by the Chair in Constitutional Governance.
- The successful applicants will have an excellent academic record. In making the selection, the selection panel will strive to select a cohort of recipients broadly representative of South Africa’s racial and gender composition.
- The scholarship will be awarded for a period of one year;
- The selected scholars will be required to provide reasonable research assistance to the Chair in Constitutional Governance; and
- The selected scholars will be expected to live in Cape Town or surroundings to be reasonably present at the University of Cape Town.
For further information contact: pierre.devos@uct.ac.za or 021 6503079.
Applicants must send a covering letter providing motivation for the application, accompanied by a full curriculum vitae with the names and contact details of three 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 25 May 2015.
