The University of Pretoria Faculty of Law was established in 1908. It consists of six academic departments, six centres, two law clinics and the Pretoria University Law Press (PULP).[4] This faculty has Departments of Jurisprudence, Mercantile Law, Private Law, Procedural Law, Public Law and Centre for Human Rights. The faculty offers the undergraduate LLB degree, and postgraduate LLM/MPhil and LLD/PhD degrees.
The proposal for a university for the capital, first mooted in the Volksraad in 1889, was interrupted by the outbreak of the Anglo Boer War in 1899. In 1902, after the signing of the Peace of Vereeniging, the Normal College for teacher training was established in Groenkloof, Pretoria, and in 1904, the Transvaal Technical Institute, with an emphasis on mining education, opened in Johannesburg. In 1906, the Transvaal Technical Institute changed its name to the Transvaal University College (TUC).[8] On 4 March 1908, when Transvaal University College (TUC) transferred its arts and science courses to its newly established Pretoria Campus, the precursor to the university was established, initially offering courses in languages, sciences, and law.[9][10]
In November 2019, Elsabe Schoeman became Dean of UP Law.[11] Since August 2020, the Deputy Dean for Teaching and Learning has been Professor Charles Maimela, the youngest and first black Deputy Dean at UP Law.[12]
UP Law currently employs approximately 70 dedicated full-time academics.[13][when?]
Global ranking
UP Law got a global 78th-placed ranking in 2023 and 60th in 2022,[14] making it the highest ranked Faculty of Law on the African continent.[15]
The faculty conferred 179 masters' and 35 doctoral graduates in 2017, 173 master's and 27 doctoral graduates in 2018,[16] and 18 doctoral and 246 master's degrees in 2019.[17]
Faculty of Law buildingThe University of Pretoria Old Arts building
Centres and institutes
Centres and institutes in the faculty include the Centre for Advanced Corporate & Insolvency Law, Centre for Child Law, Centre for Human Rights, Centre for Intellectual Property Law, Centre for Medicine & Law, Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa and Sports Law Centre in Africa.
The ICLA coordinates the Oxford Constitutions Online African country reports and collaborates with the Centre for Human Rights to coordinate the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC) Online African case law.[5]
The Africa Regional Round is hosted by the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa, University of Pretoria Faculty of Law
Pretoria University Law Press
The Pretoria University Law Press (PULP), within the Faculty of Law, publishes and distributes scholarly legal texts in English, Afrikaans, French, Arabic and Portuguese.[21] PULP publishes a series of collections of legal documents related to African public law and legal textbooks from other African countries and is a member of the Publishers' association of South Africa.[22]
Student activities
Law students participate in the following activities:
The Constitutional Tribunal is the judicial body of student governance and adjudicates disputes primarily between student organisations, and its judges sit on the panel of student disciplinary hearings.
The Pretoria Student Law Review (PSLR), published by PULP, is a student-driven and administered initiative providing an interactive student platform to discuss topical legal matters.[23]
Law House provides a platform for social engagement, community outreach and student engagement with the faculty.
Several internal and external moot court competitions through the Moot and Debating Society.
The Student Disciplinary Advisory Panel (SDAP) may give advice to students appearing in front of student disciplinary hearings regarding the procedure of student disciplinary hearings.
Alumni
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations.(April 2019)
Stellenbosch University (SU) (Afrikaans: Universiteit Stellenbosch, Xhosa: iYunivesithi yaseStellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant university in Sub-Saharan Africa, which received full university status in 1918. Stellenbosch University designed and manufactured Africa's first microsatellite, SUNSAT, launched in 1999.
LourensWepener Hugo "Laurie" Ackermann was a South African retired judge who served on the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2004. Appointed to the inaugural court by Nelson Mandela, he is best known for his jurisprudence on dignity. He was formerly an academic, a practising advocate, and a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa.
The Faculty of Law and Justice of the University of New South Wales is a law school situated in Sydney, Australia. It is widely regarded as one of Australia's top law schools. The 2021 QS World University Rankings rank the UNSW Law Faculty 13th in the world, first for undergraduate law in Australia, 2nd overall in Australia and 3rd in the Asia-Pacific region, and the 2021 Times Higher Education subject rankings also rank it second in Australia, making it the top ranked law school in New South Wales according to both tables, as well as being the top undergraduate Law school in the country.
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The Dundee Law School is the law school of the University of Dundee in Scotland. It provides undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in Scots and English law, permitting students to qualify into all three United Kingdom legal jurisdictions. The law school traces its roots to the University of St. Andrews, and has placed in the top 15 law schools in the UK on the University League Tables. The school is based in the Scrymgeour Building—named for Henry Scrymgeour, a 16th-century legal philosopher from Dundee—while the Law Library is based in the libraries building, both on the university's main campus. The Law School is part of the wider School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law at Dundee.
Ismail Mahomed SCOB SC was a South African lawyer and jurist who served as the first black Chief Justice of South Africa from January 1997 until his death in June 2000. He was also the Chief Justice of Namibia from 1992 to 1999 and the inaugural Deputy President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1995 to 1996.
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The African Human Rights Moot Court Competition is an international moot court competition with a special focus on human rights in Africa. The competition is organised by the Centre for Human Rights, based at the University of Pretoria Faculty of Law in South Africa. Each year, the competition is hosted by a Law Faculty from a different African country. Since its inception in 1992, the competition has had 845 participant teams originating from 125 universities from 45 African countries.
The University of Pretoria is a multi-campus public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was established in 1908 as the Pretoria campus of the Johannesburg-based Transvaal University College and is the fourth South African institution in continuous operation to be awarded university status. The university has grown from the original 32 students in a single late Victorian house to approximately 53,000 in 2019. The university was built on seven suburban campuses on 1,190 hectares.
The Nelson Mandela World Human Rights Moot Court Competition is a moot court competition on international human rights law. In 2009, the University of Pretoria Faculty of Law's Centre for Human Rights, with the assistance of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, organised the inaugural edition. Previously, the oral rounds of the competition were held annually in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. In more recent years, the competition has been held in Geneva, where the United Nations is headquartered.
More than pure aspirations, human rights are real rights that can be tested in courts of law. The World Human Rights Moot Court Competition is an exciting way for students from around the world to deepen their knowledge of rights and learn from each other.
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The Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria Faculty of Law, South Africa, is an organisation dedicated to promoting human rights on the continent of Africa. The centre, founded in 1986, promotes human rights through educational outreach, including multinational conferences, seminars and publications such as Human Rights Law in Africa, The African Human Rights Law Journal, the African Human Rights Law Reports and The Constitutional Law of South Africa. The centre, which was founded during Apartheid, assisted in adapting a Bill of Rights for South Africa and contributed to creating the South African Constitution. In 2006, the centre received the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education, particular recognising for the LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa and the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition.
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