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S V M
''S v M'' is a 2007 decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa with import for children's rights and criminal sentencing. The court held unanimously that the best interests of the child must be considered whenever a child's primary caregiver is handed a criminal sentence. This obligation arises from section 28(2) of the Constitution, which enshrines the paramountcy of the best interests of the child, read with section 28(1)(b) of the Constitution, which enshrines every children's right to family care or appropriate alternative care. The court's majority judgment was written by Justice Albie Sachs, and the full bench agreed with his exposition of section 28. The majority used this framework to overturn a prison sentence handed to a single mother, instead sentencing her to a period of non-custodial correctional supervision. However, a three-member minority, represented in a minority opinion by Justice Tholie Madala, differed from the majority in its evaluation of the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitutional Court Of South Africa
The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme court, supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction. The Court was first established by the South African Interim Constitution, Interim Constitution of 1993, and its first session began in February 1995. It has continued in existence under the Constitution of South Africa, Constitution of 1996. The Court sits in the city of Johannesburg. After initially occupying commercial offices in Braamfontein, it now sits in a purpose-built complex on Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, Constitution Hill. The first court session in the new complex was held in February 2004. Originally the final appellate court for constitutional matters, since the enactment of the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa, Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution in 2013, the Constitutional Court has jurisdiction to hear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Sentencing
In law, a sentence is the punishment for a crime ordered by a trial court after conviction in a criminal procedure, normally at the conclusion of a trial. A sentence may consist of imprisonment, a fine, or other sanctions. Sentences for multiple crimes may be a concurrent sentence, where sentences of imprisonment are all served together at the same time, or a consecutive sentence, in which the period of imprisonment is the sum of all sentences served one after the other. Additional sentences include intermediate, which allows an inmate to be free for about 8 hours a day for work purposes; determinate, which is fixed on a number of days, months, or years; and indeterminate or bifurcated, which mandates the minimum period be served in an institutional setting such as a prison followed by street time period of parole, supervised release or probation until the total sentence is completed. If a sentence is reduced to a less harsh punishment, then the sentence is said to have been mit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thembile Skweyiya
Thembile Skweyiya (17 June 1939 – 1 September 2015) was brother of Zola Skweyiya and he was a South African Constitutional Court judge from 2003 to 2014. Skweyiya attended primary school in Cape Town, but later attended boarding school at the Healdtown Institution in the Eastern Cape where he matriculated in 1959. Justice Skweyiya earned a BSocSci degree from the University of Natal The University of Natal was a university in the former South African province Natal which later became KwaZulu-Natal. The University of Natal no longer exists as a distinct legal entity, as it was incorporated into the University of KwaZulu- ... in 1963 and an LLB degree from the same university in 1967. Skweyiya retired from the bench of the Constitutional Court of South Africa on 6 May 2014 at the age of 73. References Judges of the Constitutional Court of South Africa South African judges 1939 births 2015 deaths {{SouthAfrica-law-bio-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kate O'Regan
Catherine "Kate" O'Regan (born 17 September 1957) is a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. From 2013 to 2014 she was a commissioner of the Khayelitsha Commission and is now the inaugural director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. Early life O'Regan was born in Liverpool, England, into a large Catholic family of Irish immigrants. She moved to Cape Town when she was seven. Her mother was a dentist from a "very political household"; her father was a doctor who became active in poor Catholic communities and those subjected to forced removals. O'Regan studied at the University of Cape Town from 1975 to 1980, earning a BA and LLB. She was taught briefly by Arthur Chaskalson, who had recently founded the Legal Resources Centre, and ran UCT's legal aid project, working with Mahomed Navsa of the University of the Western Cape. After earning an LLM from the University of Sydney, she returned to South Africa and began her article ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dikgang Moseneke
Dikgang Ernest Moseneke (born 20 December 1947) is a South African judge and former Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa. Biography Moseneke was born in Pretoria and went to school there. He joined the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) at the age of 14."Honorary degree citation: Dikgang Moseneke"Wits University The following year he was arrested, detained and convicted of participating in anti-apartheid activity. He spent ten years as a prisoner on Robben Island, where he met and befriended Nelson Mandela and other leading activists. While imprisoned he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English and political science and a B.Iuris degree, and would later complete a Bachelor of Laws, all from the University of South Africa. He also served on the disciplinary committee of the prisoners' self-governed association football body, Makana F.A. Moseneke started his professional career as an attorney's articled clerk at Klagbruns Inc in Pretoria in 1973. He was admitted as an attorney in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Skelton
Ann Marie Skelton (born 13 July 1961) is a South African jurist and children's rights activist who has been chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) since May 2023. She is a professor of private law at the University of Pretoria, where she is UNESCO Chair in Education Law in Africa, and she also holds the Chair in Children's Rights in a Sustainable World at Leiden University. An expert on child law, Skelton rose to prominence as a practicing human rights lawyer and advocate, first in non-profit organisations and then through the strategic litigation programme of the University of Pretoria's Centre for Child Law, which was formerly headed by Skelton. In addition, through the South African Law Reform Commission, she has played a significant role in post- apartheid child law reform in South Africa, including as chair of the committee that drafted the Child Justice Act of 2008. Academic and professional background Skelton completed he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Pretoria Faculty Of Law
The University of Pretoria Faculty of Law was established in 1908. It consists of six academic departments, six centres, two law clinics, and the Pretoria University Law Press (PULP). This faculty ranked best in Africa for the fourth year in a row with leading Departments of Jurisprudence; Mercantile Law; Private Law; Procedural Law; Public Law; and Centre for Human Rights. The faculty offers the undergraduate LLB degree, and postgraduate LLM/MPhil and LLD/PhD degrees. The Oliver R Tambo Law Library houses the faculty's collection of legal materials and the Law of Africa collection in the library is the single most comprehensive and current collection of primary legal materials of African countries. The faculty organises the annual African and World Human Rights Moot Court Competition. In 2006, faculty's Centre for Human Rights received the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education.Europe Intelligence Wire. (2003-Jan-07UNESCO awards Czech film festival One World/ref> Since 1997 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Of Rights Of South Africa
Chapter Two of the Constitution of South Africa contains the Bill of Rights, a human rights charter that protects the civil, political and socio-economic rights of all people in South Africa. The rights in the Bill apply to all law, including the common law, and bind all branches of the government, including the national executive, Parliament, the judiciary, provincial governments, and municipal councils. Some provisions, such as those prohibiting unfair discrimination, also apply to the actions of private persons. South Africa's first bill of rights was drafted primarily by Kader Asmal and Albie Sachs in 1988 from Asmal's home in Dublin, Ireland. The text was eventually contained in Chapter 3 of the transitional Constitution of 1993, which was drawn up as part of the negotiations to end apartheid. This "interim Bill of Rights", which came into force on 27 April 1994 (the date of the first non-racial election), was largely limited to civil and political rights (negative ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supreme Court Of Appeal (South Africa)
The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), formerly known as the Appellate Division, is an appellate court in South Africa. It is located in Bloemfontein, the "judicial capital" of South Africa. History On the creation of the Union of South Africa from four British colonies in 1910, the supreme courts of the colonies became provincial divisions of the new Supreme Court of South Africa, and the Appellate Division was created as a purely appellate court superior to the provincial divisions. It was the seat of some of the country's most outstanding judges including Innes CJ, Watermeyer CJ, Galgut JA, Wessels CJ and Schreiner JA. In 1994 the Constitutional Court of South Africa was created with jurisdiction superior to the Appellate Division, but it could hear only in constitutional matters. The Appellate Division, therefore, remained the highest court in non-constitutional matters. In 1997 the Appellate Division became the Supreme Court of Appeal and was given constitutional jurisdict ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Procedure Act, 1977
The Criminal Procedure Act, 1977 (Act No. 51 of 1977) is an act of the Parliament of South Africa that governs criminal procedure in South Africa's legal system. It details the procedure for the whole system of criminal law, including search and seizure, arrest, the filing of charges, bail, the plea, the testimony of witnesses and the law of evidence, the verdict and sentence, and appeal. The act is also in force in Namibia, which inherited it from the South African administration of South-West Africa. Administration of the act was transferred to the SWA government in 1979, and since then the South African and Namibian versions have diverged through amendment. A new Namibian Criminal Procedure Act was passed in 2004 but has not yet come into force. See also * Criminal procedure in South Africa * National Forensic DNA Database of South Africa The National Forensic DNA Database of South Africa (NFDD) is a national DNA database used in law enforcement in South Africa. The C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wrongfully Convicted
A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation. Academic studies have found that the main factors contributing to miscarriages of justice are: eyewitness misidentification; faulty forensic analysis; false confessions by vulnerable suspects; perjury and lies stated by witnesses; misconduct by police, prosecutors or judges; and/or ineffective assistance of counsel (e.g., inadequate defense strategies by the defendant's or respondent's legal team). Some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape High Court
The Western Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa (previously named the Cape Provincial Division and the Western Cape High Court, and commonly known as the Cape High Court) is a superior court of law with general jurisdiction over the Western Cape province of South Africa (except for the Murraysburg district which falls within the jurisdiction of the Eastern Cape Division). The division, which sits at Cape Town, consists of 31 judges led by Judge President John Hlophe. History The origins of the Western Cape Division lie in the Supreme Court of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, which was established on 1 January 1828 as the highest court of the Cape Colony. It was created by the First Charter of Justice, letters patent issued by George IV on 24 August 1827. Upon the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the Supreme Court of the Cape Colony was transformed by the South Africa Act 1909 into the Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division of the new Supreme Cour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
