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117 S. African L.J. 484 (2000)
The Future of Judicial Review in South African Administrative Law

handle is hein.journals/soaf117 and id is 494 raw text is: THE FUTURE OF JUDICIAL REVIEW IN SOUTH AFRICAN ADMINISTRATIVE LAWt Cora Hoexter* Professor of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg South African administrative law of the twentieth century cried out for two things. First, it called for completion. There was a need to develop an integrated system of administrative law in which judicial review could play a more suitable and more limited role. Secondly, it called for the construction of an appropriate theory of deference. There was a need to identify principles to guide the courts' intervention and non-intervention in administrative matters. The history of South African administrative law explained both of these requirements. The field had always been dominated by judicial review, other controls and safeguards in the administrative process having been relegated to unimportant positions or neglected altogether. Further- more, judicial review was given special prominence during the decades of Apartheid, when South African lawyers placed great reliance on judicial intervention in administrative matters to remedy the injustices of political and legal oppression. In the process they fostered an attitude that was distinctly 'pro-review' and 'anti-administration'. Their assumption -apparently justified by history-tended to be that the more review there was, the better things would be. As a result of these factors, most South African administrative lawyers became preoccupied with judicial review, so much so that they largely ignored its limits and limitations. This unbalanced stance was entirely understandable, but it was not necessarily appropriate to the era of constitutional democracy introduced in 1994. South African administrative lawyers naturally hoped that the constitutionally-mandated legislation on administrative justice would help to fulfil these needs: that it would lay the foundations for an integrated system of administrative law, and that it would allow for the construction of a balanced approach to judicial intervention. In this article I shall argue that these hopes have been disappointed by the enactment, early this year, of the Promotion of AdministrativeJustice t I am very grateful to Hugh Corder and lain Currie for commenting on drafts of this article, and to Clive Plasket for his valuable suggestions. I remain responsible for the views expressed here. * BA LLB (Natal) MA (Oxon), Advocate.

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