Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Announcing a guest blogger for the next two weeks
I am flying off to Eastern Europe this afternoon and will only be back on 4 July. I am embarking on a very adventurous holiday with my four sisters (no spouses or partners allowed). My colleague, Jaco Barnard-Naudé, with whom I have co-authored several academic articles (we are just completing an academic article in Afrikaans on The Spear saga for Litnet Akademies), has kindly agreed to act as the guest blogger here at Constitutionally Speaking in my absence. Jaco is a professor in the Department of Private Law at the University of Cape Town and teaches and conducts research in critical jurisprudence. He is an NRF rated researcher and recipient of the UCT Fellows’ Award and also a contributor to the Mail & Guardian Thought Leader Blog.
Hope you enjoy the new perspectives and insights that Jaco will bring to the Blog in my absence. I won’t be blogging unless something earth-shattering happens in South Africa during my absence. (And what can the chances be of that ever happening — after all, this is South Africa where something earth-shattering, like the firing of a Police Commissioner hardly ever occurs!)
Have fun.
