Acting deputy chief justice Zak Yacoob has responded indirectly to president Jacob Zuma's concerns about the power and intellectual vibrancy of the Constitutional Court. Zuma has questioned the split decisions emanating from the Constitutional Court: 'It is after experience that some of the decisions are not decisions that every other judge in the Constitutional Court agrees with...How could you say that [the] judgment is absolutely correct when the judges themselves have different views about it?' Yacoob said he would be 'perturbed if the 11 judges of the Constitutional Court agreed with each other, judgment after judgment, year after year' as it would suggest a court lacking in rigour and debate. Yacoob's statements come at a time when there is increasing public debate around the role and powers of the constitutional court. Both the government and members of the ruling ANC have made critical noises about the incursions of the judiciary into the political sphere.
Mar 13, 2012
































