Film

Synopsis

Courting Justice features seven South African women judges, all of whom were New Democracy appointments. They serve on the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the provincial High Courts. They speak to us while at work in their court rooms and chambers, at home and in the communities in which they were raised. Courting Justice is their story. It is a very personal story, revealing the challenges they confront working in a previously all-male institution and the sacrifices they make to effect the Constitution’s human rights promises.

Their stories, like all good stories, are also about something else. The “something else” in Courting Justice is South Africa’s transition from a racist, sexist, exploitative, brutal and oppressive past to a human rights-based constitutional democracy, and about the judiciary’s engagement in effecting that transition.