The Dignity Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

Since the Second World War, dignity has increasingly been recognized as an important moral and legal value. Although important examples of dignity-based arguments can be found in western European and North American case law and legal theory, the dignity jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South African is widely considered to be the most sweeping in the world. In part, this is related to the unique provisions of the South African Constitution in areas such as socioeconomic rights and allowing dignity to be taken into the sphere of economic justice as well as that of human rights.
This book brings together the first sixteen years of constitutional jurisprudence addressing the meaning, role, and reach of dignity in the law of South Africa as a multiracial democracy. The case law is coupled with analysis from a range of selected contributors.
The book will therefore be a crucial source for anyone seeking to evaluate dignity, whether in law or in human life more broadly.

“"It is a major contribution to knowledge to make available in English to a wider world the path-breaking leading cases of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and to organize these cases, as this book does, around the Kantian moral concept of dignity that plays such an important role both in the text of the South African Constitution and in the interpretive jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa." -----David A.J. Richards, New York University”

"It is a major contribution to knowledge to make available in English to a wider world the path-breaking leading cases of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and to organize these cases, as this book does, around the Kantian moral concept of dignity that plays such an important role both in the text of the South African Constitution and in the interpretive jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa." -- -David A.J. Richards New York University

Drucilla Cornell is Professor of Political Science, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She also teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London, and the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
Stu Woolman is Professor & Elizabeth Bradley Chair of Ethics, Governance & Sustainable Development, University of the Witwatersrand; Academic Director, South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights & International Law, Editor-in-Chief, Constitutional Law of South Africa.
Sam Fuller is a lawyer practicing in Cape Town.
Michael Bishop is Advocate of the High Court of South Africa; Managing Editor-in-Chief, Constitutional Law of South Africa.
Jason Brickhill is Member of the Johannesburg Bar; Counsel, Constitution Litigation Unit, Legal Resourses Centre.
Diana Dunbar is an independent editor in South Africa.

Since the Second World War, dignity has increasingly been recognized as an important moral and legal value. Although important examples of dignity-based arguments can be found in western European and North American case law and legal theory, the dignity jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South African is widely considered to be the most sweeping in the world. In part, this is related to the unique provisions of the South African Constitution in areas such as socioeconomic rights and allowing dignity to be taken into the sphere of economic justice as well as that of human rights. This book brings together the first sixteen years of constitutional jurisprudence addressing the meaning, role, and reach of dignity in the law of South Africa as a multiracial democracy. The case law is coupled with analysis from a range of selected contributors. The book will therefore be a crucial source for anyone seeking to evaluate dignity, whether in law or in human life more broadly.

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