Friday, October 17, 2014

Affirmative Action in South Africa

On our sister Human Rights blog, the Oxford Human Rights Hub, Barrister Andrew Wheeler recently published an interesting analysis of South African Police Service v. Solidarity obo  Barnard, a decision of the South African Constitutional Court.  The specific question considered by the court was, essentially, what measures constitute affirmative action and what standard applies to determine whether someone has violated Rule 9(2) of the South African Constitution, which specifies that affirmative action is permitted under South African law.

Comparative examination of affirmative action is not foreign in the U.S.  In her concurrence in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Ginsburg noted that affirmative action is an accepted concept under international law and under the laws of many other countries.  In recent years, affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court have often been accompanied by amicus briefs detailing the ways in which peer nations employ affirmative action measures, from quotas to preferences.  This new South African case extends, and perhaps complicates, the comparative jurisprudence in this hotly contested area.  

 

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/human_rights/2014/10/affirmative-action-in-south-africa.html

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