Religion, legal scholarship and higher education: perspectives for the South African context

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between religion (in both the traditional and the broader sense) and legal scholarship in South Africa, with special emphasis on the nature of Faculties of Law and universities. The contemporary approach of legal scholarship is overwhelmingly limited to the pragmatic and the empirical, and vehemently in opposition to anything religious. This has dire implications for the accommodation of religious views on reality, and particularly disadvantages adherents of religion in the traditional sense. In this context, critical views on the LLB curriculum pertaining to subject content are included. University education, being driven by commitments and perspectives about mankind and about ultimates, including the accommodation of religion (with specific reference to religion in the traditional sense), requires freedom if it is to discover truth. This is especially true for the dissemination of the law, and by implication for the humanities in general.