The Constitutional Court is an excellent institution and it has saved South Africa in any number of situations on any number of occasions. Its sense of justice is profound and its decisions are invariably excellent. But the ruling on analogue switch-off is not. Here’s why.
I find myself in the unfortunate position of doing a lot of disagreeing with judges these days. Disagreeing with judges is a tricky issue and one does not do it lightly. This is only partly because of the going-to-jail situation.
But ultimately, judges are people like you and me, and they have opinions, like you and I, and sometimes those opinions are wrong. They are different from you and me in that they have had the benefit of hearing both sides at length and in detail (sometimes, I think we can all agree, in too much length and often over-egging the detail part too).
They also have the enormous benefit of time to really consider their decisions carefully. And they form part of legal context and tradition which is often hard for ordinary people to understand.
And, of course, they are almost always estimable people (although in the case of the US Supreme Court, you…
Read the full story on Daily Maverick.
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