E-Book Overview
This is the first comprehensive casePub to address the relationship of uBuntu to law. It also provides the most important critical articles on the use of uBuntu, both by the Constitutional Court and by other levels of the judiciary in South Africa.Although uBuntu is an ideal or value rooted in South Africa, its purchase as a performative ethic of the human goes beyond its roots in African languages. Indeed, this casePub helps break through some of the stale antinomies in the discussions of cultures and rights, since both the courts and the critical essays discuss ubuntu as not simply an indigenous or even African ideal but one that is its own terms calls for universal justification. The efforts of the Constitutional Court to take seriously competing ideals of law and justice has led to original ethical reasoning, which has significant implications for post apartheid constitutionalism and law more generally. uBuntu, then, as it is addressed as an activist ethic of virtue and then translated into law, helps to expand the thinking of a modern legal system's commitment to universality by deepening discussions of what inclusion and equality actually mean in a postcolonial country. Since uBuntu claims to have universal purchase, its importance as a way of thinking about law and justice is not limited to South Africa but becomes important in any human rights discourse that is not limitedly rooted in Western European ideals. Thus this book will be a crucial resource for anyone who is seriously grappling with human rights, postcolonial constitutionalism, and competing visions of the relations between law and justice.
E-Book Content
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UB U NTU AN D TH E LAW
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just
ideas
transformative ideals of justice in ethical and political thought
series editors Drucilla Cornell Roger Berkowitz Kenneth Michael Panfilio
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UB U NTU AN D TH E LAW AFRICAN IDEALS AND POSTAPARTHEID JURISPRUDENCE
Edited by Drucilla Cornell and Nyoko Muvangua
fordham university press new york
2012
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Copyright © 2012 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ubuntu and the law : African ideals and postapartheid jurisprudence / edited by Drucilla Cornell and Nyoko Muvangua. p. cm. — (Just Ideas) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN ---- (cloth : alk. paper) . Law—South Africa—Philosophy. . Post-apartheid era—South Africa. . Customary law—South Africa. . Ubuntu (Philosophy) I. Muvangua, Nyoko. II. Cornell, Drucilla. KTL.U .—dc Printed in the United States of America 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1 First edition
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This book is dedicated to Justice Yvonne Mokgoro, whose life and work on the Constitutional Court embody the spirit