Remaking South African legal education: the state, the legal profession and student activism

Ralph Madlalate

Chapter 22 in Research Handbook on Global Legal Education, 2026, pp 422-439 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter traces the historical and transnational evolution of South African legal education, situating it within shifting configurations of empire, apartheid and post-apartheid transformation. It argues that law schools have long mirrored and mediated global power relations—from colonial knowledge transfers between the metropole and the periphery to contemporary struggles over decolonization and access. Drawing on archival, policy and institutional sources and focusing on the student activism in the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movement, this chapter examines how legal education developed through interactions among the state, the professional bar and universities, and how students repeatedly emerged as transformative actors within this ecosystem by unsettling entrenched hierarchies and catalyzing policy reforms around equity, curriculum and decolonization. By following these circuits of protest and reform, the chapter reframes South African legal education as a dynamic field where local contestations generate transnational solidarities, illuminating how law schools function as both instruments of domination and potential sites of social and epistemic transformation.

Keywords: Empire; Apartheid and Post-apartheid Legal Training; Legal Reform and State Interventions; Law Schools as Sites of Domination and Transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781788117005
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