Justice tells law students the story behind South Africa's constitution

Cornell law student James Yoon, left, editor in chief of the Cornell International Law Journal, speaks with South African Justice Johann Kriegler, right, before Kriegler's Oct. 25 lecture in Myron Taylor Hall. Larry Bush, executive director of the Law School's Clarke Center for International and Comparative Legal Studies, looks on. Sheryl D. Sinkow

By Linda Myers

Justice Johann Kriegler, who serves on South Africa's Constitutional Court, which created the country's post-apartheid constitution, spoke with Cornell Law School students in Myron Taylor Hall's Berger atrium Oct. 25. The audience included many international law students.

Kriegler discussed how South Africa overcame dire predictions of a racial blood bath in the 1990s after the state policy of racial separatism was dismantled and the first inclusive elections were held. The 11-member court played a major role in that "peaceful revolution," Kriegler related. It created the framework for a truly democratic system to replace the long-entrenched apartheid system, which had offered justice only for the ruling white minority. Building on an agreement of constitutional principles and ideas from the entire country, the justices built a detailed 241-section document. They also outlawed capital punishment and wrote the country's first bill of rights, which guarantees social and economic rights in addition to such freedoms as universal suffrage and equal rights for minorities and gays.

Criticized by legislators for interfering with their right to create public policy and budgets, the court insisted that such guarantees were fundamental. That stance led to the government's taking immediate responsibility for the country's massive housing and AIDS problems.

Kriegler was on campus as part of a conference on democratic reform in Africa sponsored by Cornell's Institute for African Development.