When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am your God – Leviticus 19:33-34.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit – Ephesians 2:19-22.
The freedom to debate the conduct of public affairs by the judiciary does not mean that attacks, however scurrilous, can with impunity be made on the judiciary as an institution or on individual judicial officers. A clear line cannot be drawn between acceptable criticism of the judiciary as an institution, and of its individual members, on the one side and on the other side statements that are downright harmful to the public interest by undermining the legitimacy of the judicial process as such. But the ultimate objective remains: courts must be able to attend to the proper administration of justice and — in South Africa possibly more importantly — they must be seen and accepted by the public to be doing so. Without the confidence of the people, courts cannot perform their adjudicative role, nor fulfil their therapeutic and prophylactic purpose.
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