1,720,957 research outputs found
Generosity as a Constitutive Element in African Customary Law: Some Thoughts on Muvhali v Lukhele (21/34140) [2022] ZAGPJHC 402 (18 July 2022)
Full text linkOver the last decade, courts have been called upon to adjudicate the validity of marriages under the auspices of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act 120 of 1998. In Muvhali v Lukhele (21/34140) [2022] ZAGPJHC 402 (18 July 2022) the high court had to decide on the validity of a marriage, considering contested claims to the succession of a deceased estate. In this case note I discuss the court's findings with the background of its reasoning that the inception of African customary law is born a the spirit of generosity. In implied terms, the court asserted that generosity is a constitutive element of customary law, insisting that this must be reflected in how both facts and the law are interpreted where customary disputes are concerned. I briefly investigate the essence of "generosity", its historicity and the potential implications for customary law disputes, particularly those that have to do with customary marriages. The thesis of my argument is that the acceptance of an undefined generosity as a constitutive element of customary law brings about a level of legal uncertainty, but that this is not a weakness. Instead, it is an opportunity for a radical (and even decolonial) re-imagination of a legal system that embraces the jurisprudence of generosity. If understood and applied correctly, African customary law can be exemplary for other disciplines of law in terms of achieving some of the transformative aspirations of the post-apartheid constitutional order
Contested Legacies of the SA Constitution: An Engagement with Albie Sachs' Oliver Tambo's Dream.
No full textSachs wrote Oliver Tambo\u27s Dream based on a series of four public lectures that he delivered on four separate topics, and at four different universities in South Africa. The golden thread that runs through the four lectures is Sachs\u27 application of the South African constitution on various social questions and as well as his recount of President Oliver Tambo\u27s influence therein
The Socio-legal Praxis of Leviticus 25
No full textTo Whom Belongs the Land? Leviticus 25 in an African Liberationist Reading, by Ndikho Mtshiselwa
Peter Lang. 2018. xviii + pp. 284.
ISBN: 978-1-4331-3893-5
https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4331-3897-
WHY DECOLONISATION AND NOT TRANSFORMATIVE CONSTITUTIONALISM
Full text linkPaul Mudau and Sibabalo Mtonga proffer ‘Extrapolating the role of transformative constitutionalism in the decolonisation and Africanisation of Legal Education in South Africa’ to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about South Africa’s LLB curriculum, and to make studied comments about the need to shift from colonial modes of knowing, thinking, and doing. Their article does well to study the strides that have been made in this discourse, as they make use of the University of Pretoria’s Curriculum Transformation Document as one example of the progress that has been made. Mudau and Mtonga conclude that adherence to transformative constitutionalism may enhance decolonisation and Africanisation, and thus lead to the gradual transformation of legal education in South Africa. This rejoinder sets the argument from a different starting point — it insists that the definitive thrust of the Decolonial Turn in South Africa presents a decided critique of the 1994 constitutional arrangement, therefore rendering transformative constitutionalism a misfit in the quest to decolonise and Africanise South African legal education. This article concludes by asserting that South African law teachers, and anyone interested in the quest to alter colonial pedagogies, should concern themselves with seeking definitional clarity, and the rest shall follow
Prophecy and the Pandemic: The Vindication of Decolonial Legal Critical Scholarship
No full textThe ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic offers the legal academy a special opportunity to reflect on various conceptual, ideational, and ideological questions that cleavage the academy and society. In this exposition, I embrace an exegetical-cum-legalist enunciation to analyse the material conditions that define the lives of the historically and presently colonised peoples of South Africa. In the main, this treatise advances two arguments: (1) that the present socio-economic conditions illustrate the decisive thrust of decolonial legal critical scholarship and its ability to predict the future; and (2) that critical approaches to the law constitute a legitimate intellectual prophetic engagement. I conclude by insisting that decolonial legal critical scholarship should be the cornerstone and a focal point of emphasis in the calls to shift [and decolonise] all facets of the law and its curriculum
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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