10 - From Pale Reflection to Guiding Light

Summary

Once a pale reflection of the English common law, judicial review in South African administrative law has been thoroughly indigenised as a result of both constitutionalisation and codification. The South African model has indeed come to be regarded as an archetype of constitutionalised judicial review. Judicial review was and remains the most dominant safeguard in South African public law. The chapter describes this and other significant features of the system both before and after 1994. It goes on to explain how the rights to just administrative action and the legislation giving effect to them, the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act 3 of 2000, have been a guiding light for a number of other jurisdictions over the last two decades. Finally, the chapter points to areas in which English cases and doctrines have been and continue to be relied on by the South African courts in administrative law. Remarkably, and notwithstanding the thorough indigenisation depicted here, the connection with English administrative law is still quite obvious and probably always will be.