Going Against the Grain – Justice Froneman as Subversive (Legal) Historian

Abstract

My tentative argument in this piece is that Justice Johan Froneman's engagement with history can be read as "subversive" and that this very subversiveness holds the possibility to destabilise legal culture and disclose possibilities for a "rewriting", a "re-orientation" of jurisprudence, and of law. I explore to what extent the way in which legal scholars, professionals and in particular judges invoke history and memory influences legal culture, and accordingly how we understand and do law.

Keywords

• legal history
• nostalgia
• Froneman
• memory