Lecture

Adjudicating Legal Pluralism in South Africa's Constitutional Democracy: The Challenge of Paradox

On Wednesday, 14 May 2025, Catherine O'Regan will deliver the annual Van Vollenhoven Lecture

Author

Catherine O'Regan

Date

24 April 2025

The South African Constitution recognises that South Africa has a pluralist legal system, comprising customary or indigenous law, on the one hand, and common law and statute, on the other. The democratic Constitution includes in its founding values “non-racialism and non-sexism and universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness”. Yet it also recognises “the institution, status and role of traditional leadership" according to customary law.  The processes for selecting new traditional leaders vary across communities, but often assume that the leader should be male, and of course a senior member of the relevant community. Disputes about succession are common and often deeply divisive. Over the last thirty years, South Africa’s Constitutional Court has had to develop an approach to the pluralism acknowledged in the constitutional text while still respecting the founding values of the Constitution. In this lecture, Kate O’Regan, who served as one of the first judges of South Africa’s Constitutional Court from 1994 - 2009, will discuss how the Court has approached the challenge of adjudicating cases relating to customary law and traditional leadership.

This lecture was organised by:
The Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society (VVI)

Van Vollenhoven Lectures

The Van Vollenhoven lectures are organized in honour of Cornelis van Vollenhoven, the Leiden law professor who acquired fame between 1901 and 1933 for his elaborate and detailed description and analysis of the laws of the Netherlands-Indies as well as for his impressive contributions to public international law.