Women as a Sign of the New? Appointments to South Africa's Constitutional Court since 1994

Johnson, Rachel E.

Abstract

The aim of the article is to develop our understanding of the role bodies play in processes of institutional change. It does so through developing an approach to the politics of institutional newness that highlights the way in which raced and gendered bodies can become entangled with claims to, or judgements of, “being new.” These questions are explored through South Africa's Constitutional Court, newly established as part of South Africa's transition to democracy in the 1990s and at the center of the broader claims being made about the creation of a new democratic, nonracial, and non-sexist South Africa. Focusing on judicial appointments to the Constitutional Court since 1994, the article draws attention to the ways in which historically excluded bodies, women and black men, have been included into this new space within the judiciary. It is argued that exploring the ways in which institutions lay claim to “being new” through the bodies of historically excluded groups is important for our understanding of the dynamics of institutional change being constituted.

Citation

Johnson, R. E. (2014). Women as a Sign of the New? Appointments to South Africa's Constitutional Court since 1994. Politics & Gender, 10(4), 595-621. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1743923x14000439

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Dec 9, 2014
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Sep 15, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 15, 2015
• Journal: Politics & Gender
• Print ISSN: 1743-923X
• Electronic ISSN: 1743-9248
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 595-621
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s1743923x14000439
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1423612