Chief Justice of South Africa | |
---|---|
List
| |
Style | The Honourable |
Nominator | Judicial Service Commission |
Appointer | President of South Africa |
Term length | 12 years |
Inaugural holder | Lord de Villiers |
Formation | 1910 |
Deputy | Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa |
Website | Office of the Chief Justice |
The Chief Justice of South Africa [1] is the most senior judge of the Constitutional Court and head of the judiciary of South Africa, who exercises final authority over the functioning and management of all the courts.
The position of Chief Justice was created upon the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, with the Chief Justice of the Cape Colony, Sir (John) Henry de Villiers (later created The 1st Baron de Villiers), being appointed the first Chief Justice of the newly created Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa.
Until 1961, the Chief Justice held a dormant commission as Officer Administering the Government, meaning that if the Governor-General died or was incapacitated the Chief Justice would exercise the powers and duties of the Governor-General. This commission was invoked in 1943 under N.J. de Wet, and in 1959 and 1961 under L.C. Steyn.
The position of Chief Justice as it stands today was created in 2001 by the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa, as an amalgamation of two previous high-ranking judicial positions of Chief Justice and President of the Constitutional Court. The Chief Justice therefore now presides over the Constitutional Court. The position of the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, the successor court to the Appellate Division, was as a consequence renamed President of the Supreme Court of Appeal.
At the time of South Africa's democratisation in the early 1990s, the position of Chief Justice was held by University of Cambridge graduate and Second World War veteran Michael Corbett. Corbett took office in 1989, succeeding Chief Justice P.J. Rabie, who had been scheduled to retire in 1986 at the statutory retirement age of 70, but had had his tenure in office extended on an ad hoc basis by State President P.W. Botha. [2]
However, with the fall of Apartheid imminent, the progressively-minded Corbett was eventually handed the job of Chief Justice in 1989. Although appointed by the National Party government, Corbett was generally well liked by those in South Africa's new African National Congress (ANC)-led government, and upon his retirement in 1996 was given a formal state banquet where President Mandela paid tribute to the Chief Justice's "passion for justice", "sensitivity to racial discrimination", "intellectual rigour" and "clarity of thought". [3]
The first Chief Justice to be appointed in post-apartheid South Africa was Ismail Mahomed, a leading South African jurist of Indian descent, who was selected to succeed Corbett in 1997 and eventually took office in 1998. Mahomed held the position until his death in 2000.
Under South Africa's Interim Constitution of 1993 and later the Final Constitution, the importance of the position of Chief Justice as the position of final judicial authority was temporarily relegated beneath that of the President of the newly created Constitutional Court. Ismail Mohammed had been tipped widely for the job of Constitutional Court President but in 1994, President Nelson Mandela appointed leading human rights lawyer and director of the Legal Resources Centre Arthur Chaskalson to the position. In 2001, after Mohammed's death and, consequently, with the position of Chief Justice vacant, the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa fused the positions of Chief Justice and President of the Constitutional Court into one single job of Chief Justice. Chaskalson was subsequently appointed to the new post, although his tasks remained effectively the same.
Source: [4]
*1828 Supreme Court established
Arthur Chaskalson SCOB, was President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2001 and Chief Justice of South Africa from 2001 to 2005. Chaskalson was a member of the defence team in the Rivonia Trial of 1963.
The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction.
The following lists events that happened during 1931 in South Africa.
Ismail Mahomed SCOB SC was a South African lawyer who served as the Chief Justice of South Africa and the Chief Justice of Namibia, and co-authored the constitution of Namibia.
Sandile Ngcobo is former justice in the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He served as Chief Justice from 2009 to 2011.
Dikgang Ernest Moseneke is a South African judge and former Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa.
The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) is a human rights organisation based in South Africa with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Grahamstown. It was founded in 1979 by a group of prominent South African lawyers, including Arthur Chaskalson, Felicia Kentridge, and Geoff Budlender, under the guidance of American civil rights lawyers Jack Greenberg and Michael Meltsner, then Director-Counsel and former First Assistant Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund respectively.
The Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa is a judge in the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the second-highest judicial post in the Republic of South Africa, after the Chief Justice. The post, originally called "Deputy President of the Constitutional Court", was created in September 1995 by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Second Amendment Act, 1995, which was an amendment to the Interim Constitution. The position was retained by the final Constitution which came into force in February 1997. In November 2001 the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa restructured the judiciary, and the post was renamed to "Deputy Chief Justice".
The Judicial Service Commission is a body specially constituted by the South African Constitution to recommend persons for appointment to the judiciary of South Africa.
Mogoeng Thomas Reetsang Mogoeng is a South African jurist who served as the Chief Justice of South Africa from 8 September 2011 until his retirement on 11 October 2021.
The Chief Justice of the Cape Colony was the most senior judge in the British Cape colony and the head of its Supreme Court. The office was created by the 1827 Charter of Justice, by which the colonial government overhauled the administration of justice at the Cape, and ceased to exist in 1910 upon the creation of the Union of South Africa.