Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an epidemic that is often viewed through the singular lens of heterosexuality. The discourse about IPV and mechanisms to combat IPV are heteronormative in nature and erase the experiences of queer persons in relationships and the manner in which violence manifests in these relationships. This paper explores third party responses to IPV in lesbian relationships. This violence is informed by heteropatriarchial attitudes and is re-enacted by third party responders, which has the effect of silencing survivors of same-sex IPV. The conceptualisation of the second closet emerges from this phenomenon.

For lesbians, keeping secrets about abuse in our relationships is also linked to homophobia and heterosexism: it is still risky for some of us to be out, and it can be dangerous to reveal abuse within an already oppressive context.

Abstract

Violence against women and children remains a pervasive human rights violation in South Africa, despite laws and policies aimed at preventing violence and advocating for the protection of the rights and dignity of women. The impact of violence on South African society and on women’s mental health and quality of life is significantly encountered in mental health contexts where many women present for psychiatric and psychological treatment. This discursive article presents a mental health practitioner’s perspective and highlights experiences of working therapeutically with female victim-survivors of violence in a psychiatric hospital in the Western Cape. I argue for greater intersectoral collaboration and responsive partnerships between mental health services, non-governmental organisations, legal centres, the criminal justice system and civil society. Further recommendations are made to challenge discriminatory practices and attitudes, and to strengthen violence prevention initiatives to enable the empowerment and safety of women in South African society.

Abstract

This contribution considers the future of the English law of contract in the form of three conversations that are alert to the disruptive impact of technologies on both the content of legal rules and the way that lawyers think – and indeed on the kind of conversations that lawyers have with one another. The first conversation is concerned with ‘coherence’ in contract law, with the application of general principles to novel fact situations and to new phenomena, with the smoothing of tensions within the law, and with the internal integrity of legal doctrine. The second conversation focuses on a tension between, on the one hand, what may be called a traditional private law ‘coherentist’ concern for doctrinal integrity and the primacy of principle over policy and, on the other hand, a more ‘regulatory’ approach to contracts, especially to consumer contracts, in which policy and instrumental rationality prevail. The third conversation focuses on the use of emerging transactional technologies (such as blockchain-supported smart contracts and AI) that have the potential to displace the rules and principles of contract law. Instead of legal code governing transactions, might we find that technological coding does all the work, making, performing and enforcing ‘contracts’? Each conversation suggests a different future for contract law. The first conversation suggests that contract law will have difficulty in living up to the private law ideal of coherence; the second suggests that coherentism will struggle to survive as it is challenged by an increasingly regulatory approach to the governance of transactions; and the third suggests that, in a world of smart transactional technologies, there is a serious question mark about the relevance of contract law as a body of rules that governs transactions.

Abstract

This contribution uses J & H Ritchie Ltd v Lloyd Ltd 2007 SC (HL) 89 as a peg on which to hang a number of fundamental questions about contract: What is a contract? Does the word ‘contract’ sometimes refer to a legal relationship rather than a juridical act? If so, does this matter? Is the law on implied terms satisfactory? Might a duty of good faith and fair dealing in contract law be a better way of dealing with certain problems than resort to the implication of terms? When is a breach of contract serious enough to justify cancellation or rescission? Should a supplier of defective goods have a right to cure the defect? Is there a risk of forgetting the difference between a right to withhold performance and a right to rescind or cancel? These questions are prompted by the fact that this was a straightforward case and similar situations must occur regularly. Yet, different judges reasoned differently and came to different conclusions in the course of the case being appealed all the way to the House of Lords. The question, therefore, is: how might a simple case have been better, or in a more straightforward way, approached through law? The contribution argues that the Draft Common Frame of Reference (the DCFR) provides both concepts and rules that would have reached the ultimate conclusion in Ritchie much more quickly and perhaps the case would not have needed to be litigated at all.

Abstract

This essay pursues a theme identified by Dale Hutchison – judges’ use of their technical expertise to achieve creativity in law – and asks how far that may be relied upon by law reform bodies, such as the Law Commissions in the United Kingdom. The question is whether such bodies should take account of means other than legislation for having their recommendations put into effect. It is suggested that, while law reform bodies should be fully aware that their published work is a source of information, ideas and arguments for practitioners and judges which may contribute to the judicial development of the law, they should address themselves only to government and the legislature.

Abstract

This paper is a response to Dale Hutchison’s recent arguments about the role of fairness in contract law after the Constitution. From the point of view of transformative constitutionalism, the paper argues that the fairness ‘debate’ in the South African law of contract should be approached as what it so patently is, namely, as evidence of a deep ideological conflict that has existed in our law of contract for a very long time, and that this debate now exists within the context of a larger debate about the appropriate transformative reach of the Constitution. The argument takes the form of two ‘dangerous supplements’ to Hutchison’s discourse. The first of these supplements contends that indeterminacy is a symptom of the common law itself, rather than a result of contract law’s contact with the Constitution. The second dangerous supplement suggests a responsible judicial engagement with bona fides and ubuntu, one that can exploit the strengths of both the common law and the Constitution and that understands good faith and ubuntu to be ‘inter-linking’ constitutional values that should be enlisted in unison or at least in resonance when it comes to the question of fairness in our contemporary law of contract. In conclusion, I offer a reading of Hutchison’s own politics of contract law and contend that his is an altruistic politics committed to the standard form. I contend that this politics of contract law is consistent with a transformative understanding of the post-apartheid legal order. ‘Law, like every other cultural institution, is a place where we tell one another stories about our relationships with ourselves, one another, and authority. In this, law is no different from the Boston Globe, the CBS evening news, Mother Jones, or a law school faculty meeting. When we tell one another stories, we use languages and themes that different pieces of the culture make available to us, and that limit the stories we can tell. Since our stories influence how we imagine, as well as how we describe, our relationships, our stories also limit who we can be’.