Basic HTML Version
598
UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Faculty of
LAW
Dean’s Report
PROFESSOR
PAMELA
SCHWIKKARD
Dean of Law
I am pleased to report that the faculty’s three departments
and their associated research units maintained their record
of diverse research in 2012, by working together to steward
and administer our thriving research enterprise. The research
capacity of the faculty was also significantly strengthened during
the past year, when six academics were successfully re-rated by
the National Research Foundation. The faculty now has a total
of nineteen NRF-rated researchers.
T
he faculty is home to the DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Customary Law (Professor
Chuma Himonga) and the now well-established DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Security
and Justice (Professor Clifford Shearing), as well as the Chair of Comparative Law
in Africa (Professor Salvatore Mancuso) – an initiative supported by the Vice-
Chancellor’s Strategic Fund – and the Chair in Intellectual Property Law and Policy
(Professor Julian Kinderlerer), funded by the national Department of Trade and
Industry. The Chairs all remained active in the generation and dissemination of
research. The Chair in Customary Law, Professor Chuma Himonga, hosted a well-
attended seminar on
Children: Rights and Ethics
on 16 October 2012. The seminar
was presented by Professor Michael Freeman, a renowned scholar on children’s
rights, and Associate Professor Anne Pope, an expert on research ethics. The Chair
of Comparative Law in Africa and the members of the Centre for Comparative Law
in Africa, which was established in 2011 to promote the study of comparative law
and draw on the strengths of comparative methodology to conduct research into
the multifaceted field of law in Africa, held its first Comparative Law methodology
workshop, titled
Building African Scholarship in Comparative Law: Teaching and
Research Methodology.
The workshop, held from 22 to 24 October 2012, hosted
participants from various African law faculties, as well as from Europe and the
United States. As part of the Vice-Chancellor’s Open Lecture series, the Centre
for Criminology together with the Institute for Security Studies, hosted leading
criminologist Professor John Braithwaite on 26 July 2012, who offered important
ideas on how South Africa could address crime in his talk, titled
Restorative Justice:
Republican Vision and Justice as a Better Future.
Further highlights from our research units include an Expert Roundtable for the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees hosted by the Refugee Rights Research Unit
on 13 and 14 September 2012. A seminar by Willie Hofmeyr, who is currently the Deputy
National Director of Public Prosecutions and Head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit, was jointly
hosted by the Centre of Criminology and the Democratic Governance and Rights Unit
(DGRU) and titled
Using Asset Forfeiture to fight Crime and Corruption
.
The faculty welcomed a number of special guests and visitors during the year.
These include former Vice-Chancellor Dr Mamphela Ramphele and the Chair of the