The judgment stands out in the history of our law, as the first in which a South African court dealt explicitly with the methods of statutory interpretation that should be followed. The court considered tree possible approaches: The first was the old English approach championed in 16 th century Elizabethan England by Edward Coke. Coke asserted the right of common law courts to review and invalidate statute law, if found to be against common right and reason.
The court quoted Coke’s famous maxim “whoever sticks to the letter, sticks to the bark” to highlight the similarities between Coke’s approach to statute law and the civilian approach of the Roman-Dutch authors. This was the second approach suggested by the court. Like Coke, these authors also insisted that statute laws should be interpreted, and expanded or restricted, according to the underlying reason or rationale or spirit of the law. The court rejected both these approaches, in favour of the modern English approach. This third approach of the late 19 th century accepted Parliament as the sovereign legislator and understood the task of the courts as giving effect to the will of Parliament as recorded in writing. Courts had to accept that the letter of the law accurately captured the will of Parliament. Courts could not second-guess the will of Parliament, nor whether the letter of the law accurately captured that will. The Court adopted this crude form of literalism as the appropriate method of statutory interpretation for the Cape Colony.
Academic scholars have pointed out that the choice was strongly influenced by the dominant ideas about the law and judicial power of the time. Literalism was appropriate, given a theory of separation of powers based on Parliamentary sovereignty, a theory of law based on legal positivism, and a theory of adjudication based on legal formalism. The De Villiers judgment forged a particular link between constitutional law, jurisprudence and statutory interpretation that we would like to explore further at this year’ colloquium.
We invite abstracts engaging with the case and its legacy.
Abstracts could propose papers or sessions dealing in general with interpretive methodologies, histories, and historic case discussions. Abstracts dealing with the teaching of statutory interpretation and jurisprudence, and the relationship between them, are particularly welcome. Abstracts could also propose papers or sessions dealing in particular with the interpretation of statutes in specific fields such as labour law, property law, company law, the codification of customary law (by colonial codes and contemporary statutes), consumer protection law, and environmental law.
Please send a 200 word abstracts to admin-rulci@uwc.ac.za by the 12 July 2025.
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