ONLINE RESOURCES FOR SOUTH AFRICAN LAW

Constitutional Court Cases:

All Constitutional Court (CC) cases handed down from 1995 onwards are available on www.constitutionalcourt.org.za, as well as on www.saflii.org. The CC website also provides access to a quo cases from the relevant High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), court papers and pleadings for CC cases.

Supreme Court of Appeal Cases:

Cases from the SCA are available on supremecourtofappeal.gov.za, as well as on www.saflii.org(from 1984 onwards). The SCA website itself is useful for finding out what cases are coming up for hearing and which ones have been refused appeal and struck off or dismissed – see the ‘Bulletin section’.

High Court Cases:

A number of High Court cases from around SA are available on saflii.org Cases may also be retrieved from various websites belonging to statutory bodies such as:

• South African Revenue Service – www.sars.gov.za.
• Pension Fund Adjudicator – www.pfa.org.za.
• Competition Commission – www.compcom.co.za.
• National Consumer Tribunal – www.thenct.org.za
• South Africa Human Rights Commission – www.sahrc.org.za.
• Public Protector – www.pprotect.org

Socio Economic & Human Rights Cases:

Human rights cases such as those covering evictions and housing matters, refugees and environment may be found on the following websites:

• Centre for Environmental Rights, Cape Town – cer.org.za.
• Refugees Rights Law Clinic, UCT, Cape Town – refugeerights.uct.ac.za.
• Section 27, Johannesburg – section27.org.za.
• Legal Resources Centre – regional offices lrc.org.za.
• Lawyers for Human Rights – regional offices – lhr.org.za.
• Socio Economic Rights Institute, Johannesburg seri-sa.org.

 Judgments and comments:

To find out how judgments have been dealt with, or commented on, or to see where journal articles have been cited, SAFLII also provides LawCite at www.saflii.org.za/LawCite/. This is an automatically generated international legal case and journal article citator.

LawCite will help you locate and find a copy of a decision, see how a decision has been subsequently dealt with and find other materials such as journal articles about a decision. It will also help you to see how journal articles have been cited by other journal articles and cases.

Looking for legislation:

A website www.lawsofsouthafrica.up.ac.za containing free online consolidated South African legislation – with ‘point-in-time’ or historical versions, was launched in 2013.

Government Gazettes:

For GG see www.gov.za – ‘Documents section’ and the Government Printing Works website (www.gpwonline.co.za). There is no charge for the service at the Government Printing Works but you will need to register.

Bills:

To find out how a Bill becomes an Act see: https://pmg.org.za/bills/explained/. For status of Bills, see https://pmg.org.za orwww.parliament.gov.za under ‘Legislation’.

Green and White Papers:

If you are looking for green and white papers see www.gov.za – ‘Documents section’.

Law journals:

There are three websites you can search for law journal articles published in SA:

• Open South African Legal Periodicals Index – https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/library/electronic-resources This is a free database.  Access legal journals in South Africa
• Johannesburg Society of Advocates library – See ‘Library Section’ – johannesburgbar.co.za. This is a free database.
• Sabinet – journals.co.za. This is a free database.

You can also use the Sabinet website (www.journals.co.za) to search most of the law journals published in SA all at once (articles published from 2000 onwards. To access older law journals (published in South Africa) there is also an archive of older journal articles available at The African Journal Archive (www.ajarchive.org) is a Sabinet Gateway project in conjunction with the Carnegie Corporation.

Open access legal journals in South Africa:

• African Public Procurement Law Journal is published by the Faculty of Law, Stellenbosch University http://applj.journals.ac.za/pub (from 2014, volume 1 onwards).
• African Human Rights Law Journal is published by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria ahrlj.up.ac.za/ (from 2001 onwards).
• De Jure is published by the School of Law, University of Pretoria: dejure.up.ac.za/ (since 2011).
• Journal for Juridical Science is published by the Faculty of Law, University of the Free State: https://scholar.ufs.ac.za/handle/11660/2390 
• Law, Democracy & Development is published by the Faculty of Law at the University of the Western Cape: – http://law.uwc.ac.za/journals/law-democracy-and-development  (from the first issue in 1997)
• LitNet Akademies (Regte) –https://www.litnet.co.za/category/akademies/litnet-akademies/litnet-akademies-regte/
• Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal is published by the School of Law, North West University – http://services.nwu.ac.za/centre-teaching-and-learning-ctl/open-education-resources-oer (from 1998 volume 1 onwards).
• Speculum Juris is published by the Nelson R Mandela School of Law, University of Fort Hare –  http://specjuris.ufh.ac.za/glossary – (from 2005 onwards).

How to keep abreast of legal developments in South Africa:

Content pages of South Africa journals

Sabinet Reference allows you to set up e-mail alerts or RSS feeds on the SA ePublications. These alerts will inform you when a new issue is loaded on the platform. For more information on this service, visit www.sabinetlaw.co.za/

Legal policy and legislative developments:

The service called Sabinet Law (www.sabinetlaw.co.za/) is available free of charge and that provides legislation and policy related information in the main gathered from Parliament and government websites.