The Right of Public Participation in the Law-Making Process and the Role of the Legislature in the Promotion of this Right

In 2006, the South African Constitutional Court found a constitutional right to participate in the legislative process in the case of Doctors for Life, Case CCT 12/05 (decided 17 August 2006). In this article, we argue that, first, legislation is better when legislators are required to invite and attend to public input, and, second, citizenship is better when legislators are required to invite and attend to public input. Doctors for Life puts South Africa on the road to improving both legislation and citizenship. In the United States, this road is largely untraveled. While rejecting traditional representative democracy as an adequate expression of political participation, Doctors for Life does not go as far as it could in terms of entrenching public participation in the South African legislative process. Nonetheless, it offers a model of an interim place that the United States can consider. The case also offers a model for international human rights exploration in an area of underdeveloped theory, especially in regard to enhancing respect and dignity as aspects of citizenship in a democratic state

Response to the Draft of the ‘Global Code of Conduct for Investigating and Documenting Conflict-Related Sexual Violence’

Submission, The Murad Code Project, Institute for International Criminal Investigations and Foreign and Commonwealth Offic

FLaK: Mixing Feminism, Legality and Knowledge

© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. This editorial explains the themes of the forthcoming FLaK seminar and how those themes draw on the collective and individual contributions of the articles, interviews and commentaries presented in this issue. At FLaK, we propose to think with others about the kind of ‘kitchen table’ that FLS might provide into the future. How might feminist legal studies—the approach and the journal—best use its food, equipment, techniques, time, space, mood, energy and commitment? How shall FLS scholars and associates make the most of what we have in a room that can sometimes be confining and confusing, yet also exciting and sustaining? How do others engage with the processes and products of our kitchen table? In considering these issues and more, we propose to draw reflexively on feminist legacies of praxis, internationalism and openness, as we stock up and critically reflect on decolonizing techniques, legal know-how, protest and publishing practices