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The magistrates' courts are the lowest level of the court system in South Africa. They are the courts of first instance for most criminal cases except for the most serious crimes, and for civil cases where the value of the claim is below a fixed monetary limit.
The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, as the supreme law of the Republic, provides the overarching framework for civil procedure; [6] the Constitution has been responsible for significant changes to civil procedure since its inception in the 1990s, as in, for example, debt collection matters, [7] access to the courts [8] and prescription, in particular with respect to ...
South Africa is divided into approximately 350 magisterial districts; each district is served by a district magistrate's court. In criminal cases, district courts have jurisdiction over all crimes except treason , murder and rape , and can impose a sentence of no more than three years imprisonment and a fine of no more than R 120,000. [ 2 ]
The façade of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The South African judiciary has broad powers of judicial review under the Constitution of South Africa.Courts are empowered to pronounce on the legality and constitutionality of exercises of public power, including administrative action, executive action, and the passage of acts of Parliament.
The rule of practice in South Africa is that courts should warn or inform witnesses of the privilege when the issue arises. In S v Lwane, the accused, and others involved in the robbery of a training store, fled from the scene of the crime and when they had reached what they took to be a safe distance began dividing up the loot. An argument ...
There are a large number and variety of statutes in South Africa—including Acts, ordinances, proclamations, by-laws, rules and regulations. [ 2 ] [ 7 ] As of 1993, statute law is to be found on all three levels of government ( national , provincial and local ), and as such affects every governmental sphere, and although generally referred to ...
Although both attorneys and advocates may appear in the High Court of South Africa, [8] they will 'brief' an advocate when specialist litigation is required. The split between attorney and advocate in South Africa mirrors the split between solicitor and barrister in other Commonwealth countries, with attorneys having broadly equivalent roles to ...
Countries (in pink) which share the mixed South African legal system. South Africa has a 'hybrid' or 'mixed' legal system, [1] formed by the interweaving of a number of distinct legal traditions: a civil law system inherited from the Dutch, a common law system inherited from the British, and a customary law system inherited from indigenous Africans (often termed African Customary Law, of which ...