From Import to Export: the External Circulation of South African Constitutional Jurisprudence

The phenomenon of the global interaction between national supreme courts is common diffused and is growing rapidly being one the main features of the contemporary constitutionalism. In this perspective, the 1996 democratic Constitutions is the only one allowing judges to make use of foreign law in interpreting the Bill of Rights. Due to this provision, the South African Constitutional Court, since its firsts judgements in 1995, developed an innovative hermeneutical technique based on extra-systemic inferences. Until now, however, the new South African constitutional system has been mostly perceived as an importing system. Most of the scientific efforts made by international scholars in comparative law concentrate on a specific perspective: the incoming foreign laws incorporated by the South African constitutional courts judges. The situation, however, has rapidly changed. In a decade, the South African legal system has moved from the simple act of “learning” from important foreign constitutional experiences to also “teaching” to the home countries of the liberal-democratic constitutional tradition. In other words, South Africa has quickly shifted from the position of importer of foreign legal materials to being an exporter of new constitutional experiences and experiments. The article analysis some examples of how South African precedents are going to be incorporated in to the legal reasoning of foreign Courts