These are the authorities JASA keeps in the top drawer. They are not a lecture. They are the sentences you can put on a page when someone tells you the lower court is “just administration.”
Van Rooyen and Others v The State 2002 (5) SA 246 (CC)
The leading case on magistrates. The Court held that magistrates are judicial officers; that their independence is constitutionally required; and that institutional arrangements — including how they are appointed, disciplined and supported — form part of that independence. When JASA talks about pay and pension, this is the case we are standing on.
De Lange v Smuts NO 1998 (3) SA 785 (CC)
Before Van Rooyen, De Lange already treated judicial independence as a structural requirement of the Bill of Rights, not a perk for the people in robes. O’Regan J’s reasoning on detention by a body that is not sufficiently independent is still the cleanest explanation of why “close enough to a court” is not a court.
Certification of the Constitution 1996 (4) SA 744 (CC)
Paragraphs 106 to 123 remain the primer. Judicial independence is demanded by the Constitution in the public interest. It is not a private comfort for judges. That sentence is why a magistrates’ working condition is a constitutional fact, not a human-resources complaint.
Justice Alliance of South Africa v President of the RSA 2011 (5) SA 388 (CC)
A different Justice Alliance, and a useful cousin. The Court set aside an extension of the Chief Justice’s term because the process did not honour the Constitution’s design for judicial office. The lesson travels: you cannot rearrange a judicial office by political convenience. Tenure is part of independence.
President of the RSA v South African Rugby Football Union 1999 (4) SA 147 (CC)
The recusal test every magistrate already knows: would a reasonable, objective and informed person reasonably apprehend bias? Keep it on the blotter for commission-adjacent rolls and for any matter that has been on television.
S v Makwanyane 1995 (3) SA 391 (CC)
Not a magistrates-conditions case. It is the dignity case. Ubuntu, the value of each person, the refusal to treat a human being as a means. It is the quiet authority under the mental-health page and under the burial-rights page. A court that spends people is not a section 165 court.
How to use this page
Do not cite all six in one judgment. Pick the one that does the work. Van Rooyen for conditions of service. SARFU for recusal. Certification for the public-interest point. Makwanyane when the room has forgotten that the person in the dock, and the person on the bench, are both human.