Suchergebnisse

This book by Professor John Dugard is both an autobiography as well as a critical legal history from a well-placed insider. As I have read it, the book's first goal is to explain apartheid as an oppressive and illegitimate system of laws – what I would regard as lawfare – and their impact on society, whereas the second goal is to highlight civic, government and international responses to this, drawing on case studies from Namibia, South Africa and Palestine, or what I would regard as various forms of legal mobilisation. Each case study detailed in the book is preceded by a brief history, followed by Dugard's extensive observations, and direct involvement, in each of these countries, as a scholar and as a legal practitioner in South Africa and within the United Nations system.

Law-based, civic-led advocacy has long been an important means for addressing rule of law deficits and problems of development and governance more generally. Authoritarian regimes, official and/or corporate foreign-based corruption and the structural limitations of formal rule of law mechanisms to deliver impartial justice have forced legal advocates to think creatively. This has resulted in some interesting examples of civic-led, law-based advocacy through both informal and formal structures, aimed at pursuing social justice. However, it is important to clearly distinguish legal mobilisation from illegitimate forms of legal instrumentalism, such as lawfare. In this Working Paper, I set out some of my current research ideas in this area and in particular explain my approach to researching legal mobilisation, which I regard as a practice as well as a socio-legal concept and approach, with a particular emphasis on the use of law as a form of political legitimacy.

The United Nations' 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees attempted to define and, ultimately, protect refugees after World War II. However, government efforts to regulate the entry and reception of refugees and asylum seekers have throughout history been challenged by a variety of political, religious, and cultural pressures. The essays in this chapter reveal, through sometimes personal accounts of individual experiences, the plight of refugees in a number of countries around the globe in obtaining human rights protection and social justice.

The call for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel that was launched by Palestinian civil society in 2004 represents a decisive turning point in the long-time Palestinian struggle for social justice and academic freedom and the broader struggle for Palestinian self-determination. Alongside petitions, worldwide demonstrations and other national and global advocacy initiatives, as well as a vigorous debate in the alternative and occasionally also the mainstream media, substantial scholarly literature has emerged. This literature introduces legal and moral arguments that underpin the broader call by Palestinian civil society in 2005 for 'boycotts, divestment and sanctions (hereinafter "BDS") against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights'. This essay builds on some of my earlier reflections and reviews six books (some in more detail than others) from among a growing pool of literature addressing the Palestinian calls for BDS, and the legal and moral justifications that reinforce these calls. I will explore the way in which the authors explain a way out of the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians and develop two positions that emerge from their contributions. Firstly, robust legal arguments, especially if accompanied by moral clarity, can provide a rigorous normative basis for why BDS against Israel is justified. Second, irrespective of one's view regarding BDS, legal explanations alone can be rendered meaningless and can lead to highly misleading conclusions if they are not grounded in a social and political context. This essay will conclude that any discussion on international law and the morality of BDS must critically engage with not only the politics of law and legal institutions, but also the politics of resistance.

Mobilising International Law for 'Global Justice' provides new insights into the dynamics between politics and international law and the roles played by state and civic actors in pursuing human rights, development, security and justice through mobilising international law at local and international levels. This includes attempts to hold states, corporations or individuals accountable for violations of international law. Second, this book examines how enforcing international law creates particular challenges for intergovernmental regulators seeking to manage tensions between incompatible legal systems and bringing an end to harmful practices, such as foreign corruption and child abduction. Finally, it explores how international law has local resonance, whereby, for example, cities have taken it upon themselves to give effect to the spirit of international treaties that national governments fail to implement, or even may have refused to ratify

Prior to 1994, South Africa was infamous for its racialised policies and seemingly limitless measures of social control through a regime of apartheid, or racialised separation. Its unforgiving approach of previous, white-minority governments extended to mainly black foreigners, including refugees from the civil war in Mozambique from 1977–1992. After democratic elections in 1994, South Africa's immediate post-apartheid migration regime was still largely oriented around an unreconstructed, apartheid-era approach of controlling the admission into, residence in, and departure from South Africa. This dire situation triggered a call for reform, to which policymakers were very slow to respond. Ultimately, in its efforts to develop and implement a border management and migration framework, the South African government has heavily relied on legal frameworks, border control policies, strategies and technologies transplanted from Europe and the United States. But, despite all this investment in a precedent-based yet foreign machinery, the government still struggles with its porous borders and irregular immigration. As a result, attempts to manage migration through policy reforms in South Africa have been fraught with challenges and contradictions. Particularly from around 2008, South Africa has not only embraced a spate of ever-more restrictive policies and laws that aim to sift out the desirable from the undesirable migrants, it has defied court judgements that have found the government to be in contravention of the law and the Constitution and obliged it to change. This has culminated in an explicitly deterrent and security-oriented approach that continues to lack effective judicial oversight. In this Working Paper, we present a comprehensive overview of South African migration and Border Control policies over a 25-year period. In a separate paper, which builds on this thick description, we argue that South Africa's efforts to deter immigrants has not been framed by globally-accepted principles, based on South Africa's ...

Abstract From the moment South Africa became a liberal democracy, the Government promised to deliver on social security for the poor. However, South African NGOs have reported that several barriers prevent poor South Africans, and black women in particular, from accessing the country's social assistance system. Government inaction has compelled NGOs to approach the Courts. As reflected in a series of court judgements, many problems faced by the system relate to the administration of payments by South African and multinational corporations. But is this the complete story? Applying a critical, analytical lens of legal mobilisation to explain the potential of legal mobilisation to secure progressive structural change, this article will assess the extent to which civic-based, legal advocacy aimed at securing access to social grants, and challenging the manner in which these grants have been administered, has the potential to more strategically advance socioeconomic justice and inequality for South Africa's poor. Keywords Social Assistance; Civil Society; Legal Mobilisation.

Book summary: Experts are increasingly relied on in decision-making processes at international and European levels. Their involvement in those processes, however, is contested. This timely book on the role of 'experts' provides a broad-gauged analysis of the issues raised by their involvement in decision-making processes. The chapters explore three main recurring themes: the rationales for involving experts and ensuing legitimacy problems; the individual and collective dimensions of expert involvement in decision making; and experts and politics and the politics of expertise. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, they theorize the experts' involvement in general and address their role in the policy areas of environment, trade, human rights, migration, financial regulation, and agencification in the European Union.