Law and Revolution in South Africa

Contributor: Drucilla Cornell Drucilla Cornell was Professor Emerita of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. With a background in philosophy, law, and grassroots mobilization, she played a central role in the organization of the memorable conferences on deconstruction and justice at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1989, 1990, and 1993. She was the author of The Philosophy of the Limit (1992), Feminism and Pornography (2000), and Law and Revolution in South Africa: uBuntu, Dignity, and the Struggle for Constitutional Transformation (2014). She has also coedited several books: Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (1987), with Seyla Benhabib; and Hegel and Legal Theory (1991) and Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (1992), with David Gray Carlson and Michel Rosenfeld. She was part of a philosophical exchange with Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, and Nancy Fraser entitled Feminist Contentions (1995). In addition to her academic work, she wrote four produced plays.

“Law & Revolution in South Africa continues Drucilla Cornell’s path breaking work on indigenous law formation in post-apartheid South Africa. The essays collected here add to her evolving approach to fundamental ideas of law, politics, and ethics as informing uBuntu, living customary law, and dignity jurisprudence in South Africa. This book bears directly on the vibrant ongoing debate in South Africa about how to restore societal respect for law in light of its gross misappropriation during the many decades of abuse by colonialist and racist control of the country and the accompanying gruesome suppression of the native population. This is a fascinating debate that should be of interest to all those concerned with achieving legitimacy for the institutions and procedures of legality following a transition to constitutional democracy, and especially the extent to which values embedded in customary legal traditions can be used by courts in wrestling with sensitive legal disputes from morally reconstructive perspectives.”---—Richard Falk, Princeton University --- “This book is a rare one–the reflections on philosophy, law, and political theory are profound and moving. Rather than reproduce the multiple stages of debate surrounding transitional justice – reconciliation vs. forgiveness, memory vs. forgetting– the author shifts the question toward what she calls ‘substantive revolution.’ This marks an advance in discussions of reconciliation and political life after massive, sustained spasms of violence. When one adds to that a significant dose of philosophy and critical theory – from Heidegger through contemporary political philosophers – the book takes on a new thread in theorizing transition and gives it real complexity. Substantive revolution is deepened by critical theory, critical theory is deepened by engagement with the concrete work of substantive revolution.”---—John Drabinski, Amherst College --- Partly focusing on South Africa as a case study, Cornell considers the challenge of reconstructing a government after the revolutionary overthrow of past dictatorships.