Reconstructing South African Law: Legal Formalism and Legal Culture in a New State

This chapter considers the future of legal formalism in South Africa. By formalism I mean the broad ideology of Western law which separates the ‘legal’ from the ‘politicar both institutionally and in terms of justification for decision making. Legal formalism amounts in fact to a paradigm in which legal decisions are made according to legal rules and doctrines. Rights and entitlements made according to these rules are seen in turn as different from substantive decisions in which political and other considerations govern.