Application
The extent of the jurisdiction and application of the Bill of Rights is defined by sections seven and eight, entitled "Rights" and "Application" respectively. Section seven provides that the rights apply to "all people in our country" (although certain rights are limited to citizens) and requires the state (by which is meant government at all levels) to "respect, protect, promote and fulfil" the Bill of Rights. It also notes that the rights in the Bill are subject to the limitations provided for in section thirty-six and elsewhere in the Bill; see Limitations below.
Although section two already provides for the supremacy of the Constitution over all laws and government actions, section eight explicitly states that the Bill of Rights applies to all law and binds all branches and organs of government. It further states that the provisions of the Bill also bind private parties to the extent that they are applicable, given the nature of the rights in question, and requires the courts to develop the common law to this effect. Finally, section eight extends the benefits of the Bill of Rights to juristic persons, taking into account the nature of the rights and the juristic persons in question. Thus, for example, the right to human dignity and the right to health care clearly only apply to actual human beings, while the right to freedom of expression and the right to property apply also to corporations.
Read more about this topic: Chapter Two Of The Constitution Of South Africa
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“It is known that Whistler when asked how long it took him to paint one of his “nocturnes” answered: “All of my life.” With the same rigor he could have said that all of the centuries that preceded the moment when he painted were necessary. From that correct application of the law of causality it follows that the slightest event presupposes the inconceivable universe and, conversely, that the universe needs even the slightest of events.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)