Law of South Africa
The law of South Africa is the sum judicially enforceable social norms in South Africa.
Legal History
The history of modern South African law begins with the emergence of a Dutch settlement by Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope. The legal system of the soon prospering by the settlement of the Dutch, Germans and French colony, the Dutch law established in the form of -received by the glossators and commentators Roman law. This Roman-Dutch law (English Roman Dutch Law ) remained even then applicable law, after the Cape had become a British colony in 1806 - paradoxically was replaced just three years later in the Dutch motherland Dutch law on the orders of Napoleon by the French Civil Code.
However, the change of colonial masters was not without influence on the legal system. Especially in evidence and procedural law designed the British legal system modeled on the English common law. In areas of the law, which - as the securities, bankruptcy, maritime trade, insurance and corporate law - subject to the rapid innovations of commerce, it was natural to fill the gaps in the Roman Dutch law through the acquisition of British laws. The third - and most discreet - way penetrated the English law by the trained staff at this the judge and lawyers in the Cape Colony.
An indentation for the reception of the common law marks the merger of the Cape Colony to the Boer republics in 1910 Union of South Africa. It developed in the population an increasing sense of independence from Britain, which is characterized in the legal field by the emancipation of the Universities from the mother country: The trained to South African lawyers discovered the sources of the Roman-Dutch law is itself novel and adapted it by using its principles to the circumstances at the time, a process that continues to the present. This is most clearly in the range of stuff, family and inheritance law. To know the South African law - as opposed to the common law - in Roman legal tradition continues to be the unit of property which is by definition clearly separated from the limited real rights and ownership. The trust, as a typical institution of the common law, is unknown in South Africa, its function is taken over by Roman legal institutions such as fideicommissum, stipulatio alteri and donatio ad pias causas.
The law of South Africa as a whole is thus neither the common law nor clearly assigned to the systems of Roman coinage, but a hybrid:
"Like a jewel in a brooch, the Roman - Dutch law in South Africa today glitters in a setting did what made in England. Even if it were true ( Which it is not) did the whole of South African private and commercial law had Remained pure Roman - Dutch law, the South African legal system as a whole would quietly be a hybrid one, in Which civil- and common -law elements jostle eachother. Like a precious stone in a brooch sparkles Roman-Dutch law in South Africa today, a version of which was made in England. Even if it were true (which it is not ), that the entire South African private law and commercial law would have remained pure Roman- Dutch law, the South African legal system would be as a whole nor a hybrid, in which elements of the civil law and the common law mutually bump into. "
Organisation of justice
The court types in South Africa are:
- The Constitutional Court of South Africa,
- The Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, the highest court in non- constitutional matters,
- The High Courts,
- The Magistrates ' Courts.
There are also courts for the application of African customary law.