Race, Inclusiveness and Transformation of Legal Education in South Africa

Abstract

This chapter addresses the following issues: The adoption of the South African Constitution was about upending and disrupting a colonial and racist legal system, thereby mandating a fundamental paradigm shift. The express goal was to transform the content, patterns, processes, symbols, and meaning of law and the Constitution for all South Africans, but especially for the majority black population for whom the impact of the Constitution was expected to be most profound. Consequent to that mandate, my chapter examines whether a paradigm shift implicit in the post-apartheid Constitution impelled legal education sufficiently to transform its major tenets and operations. In investigating this paradigm shift I apply an analysis centred on critical race theory. This chapter is written against the backdrop of extraordinary changes and shifts within the legal profession globally, resulting from the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the globalisation of legal services, including the outsourcing of legal services, and technology. These changes have significantly weighed upon legal education, indeed has transformed legal education, and have been documented in some detail. These changes will in time have a broader impact on South African legal education. Because I concern myself solely with the contemporary South African context, however, the issues of the 2008 global financial crisis, globalisation and technology and their impact on legal education are not considered for this chapter.