Judiciary: ConCourt taking longer to deliver judgments – research

The average time the Constitutional Court has taken to deliver a judgment has ‘almost exactly doubled’ since 2010, according to as-yet-unpublished research by University of Cape Town academics Nurina Ally and Dr Leo Boonzaier. A Sunday Times Daily report says the two academics have been studying ‘judgment processing times’ from 2010 to 2021, primarily looking at the times between the hearing of a case and the delivery of judgment. They have found that the efficiency of the apex court has significantly declined in the past 10 years. The research, to be published in the Constitutional Court Review, shores up growing anecdotal concerns about the efficiency of the Constitutional Court, says the report, noting the data shows that in 2010 it took an average of 104.1 days to deliver a judgment. By 2021, the average was 204.74 days. However, Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said measures put in place by the justices of the apex court in the second half of last year to deal with delays in the handing down of reserved judgments ‘have begun to bear fruit’. ‘At the moment only about five reserved judgments have been reserved for six months or more. Of the 24 reserved judgments only 10 have been reserved for three months, but less than six months, and only five for six months or more. This is an improvement on what the position was in the second half of last year,’ said Zondo.

Ally and Boonzaier’s research showed a steep incline in judgment turnaround times from 2013 after an amendment to the Constitution, observes the Sunday Times Daily report. Before, the Constitutional Court had jurisdiction to hear only constitutional matters, or ‘issues connected’ with them. After the amendment, the highest court could hear any appeal where there is ‘an arguable point of law of general public importance’. Judges who have been interviewed by the JSC have spoken of a huge increase in the workload of the ConCourt after the amendment came into force. Ally and Boonzaier’s research also show a steady rise in the percentage of the judgments that took longer than six months to deliver. In 2010, not a single judgment took longer than 180 days to deliver. By 2020, almost 60% of them did. Again 2013 is a turning point, after which there was a steep incline. The Chief Justice said he accepted that since 2013 there had been a huge increase in new applications ‘and because the number of justices remains the same, there was bound to be an increase in the number of days it took the justices to dispose of the applications’.