Judge Dennis Davis
The Constitution
Summary
How did South Africa become a constitutional state? Judge Dennis Davis explores the inside story and the sad aftermath.
Judge Dennis Davis
Dennis Davis is a judge of the High Court of South Africa and judge president of the Competition Appeals Court of South Africa. He has held professorial appointments at the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand, as well as numerous visiting appointments at Cambridge, Harvard, New York University, and others. He has authored eleven books, including Lawfare: Judging Politics in South Africa.
We teach it in universities, Monty. It’s a great question. Far too little in schools, far too little in relation to the media. I myself am in the unusual position as a retired judge of actually having a programme called Judge for Yourself on national television, which tries to deal with constitutional issues, but in fact it’s a very fine… The American kids know much more about their constitution than ours does.
Well, I think that’s right. And I mean, of course we don’t need to talk more about the Holocaust education. The profound levels of anti-Semitism, which now seem to exhibit themselves in virulent forms at this moment, are truly disturbing. And I think in South Africa, they have failed to the kind of constitutional education that people already need.