Mandate of Dignity

Drucilla Cornell was Professor Emerita of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. With a background in philosophy, law, and grassroots mobilization, she played a central role in the organization of the memorable conferences on deconstruction and justice at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1989, 1990, and 1993. She was the author of The Philosophy of the Limit (1992), Feminism and Pornography (2000), and Law and Revolution in South Africa: uBuntu, Dignity, and the Struggle for Constitutional Transformation (2014). She has also coedited several books: Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (1987), with Seyla Benhabib; and Hegel and Legal Theory (1991) and Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (1992), with David Gray Carlson and Michel Rosenfeld. She was part of a philosophical exchange with Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, and Nancy Fraser entitled Feminist Contentions (1995). In addition to her academic work, she wrote four produced plays.

• Preface Introduction 1. Integrity to the Past 2. The Hegelian Conception of a Properly Constituted Community 3. Law's Empire In South Africa 4. The Quest for Unity of Value 5. Integrity to Dignity 6. Dignity in South African Law Conclusion Notes Index

"This pathbreaking work puts the revolutionary achievement of the South African Constitution and the interpretive work of the South African constitutional court in the illuminating perspective of the best theory of constitutional interpretation now available, the neo-Kantian theory of equal dignity of Ronald Dworkin. It shows clearly how the work of our best constitutional courts-the South African court among them-is now a common humane enterprise for the protection of universal human rights under the rule of law throughout the world." -- -David A.J. Richards New York University School of Law "The Mandate of Dignity is an ambitious undertaking that contributes importantly to ongoing debates within jurisprudence and political philosophy as well as more specific controversies regarding constitutional law and transitional justice in South Africa." -- -Morris Kaplan Purchase College, SUNY