The national and the international influences on the drafting of the South African Bill of Rights : A study on the South African transitional legal culture.

Abstract: The South African democratic transition in the 1990s represents one of the clearest cases of practical implementation of constitutional engineering. The process was aimed to the creation of the principle of national unity in the fundamental text first, hoping it would be mirrored consequently by a popular sentiment. Within this context, the Bill of Rights, included in the second chapter of the final text, affirmed itself as the most relevant document that emerged from the country's nation-building process. This thesis aims to compare the influences that the national and international components of the South African transitional legal culture had on the drafting of the Bill of Rights, through the investigation of their historical and political dynamics. The analysis highlights that the liberal component characterizes the majority of the text, while being, however, declined on the neo-liberal international doctrine, while the African customary law is recognized within the cultural rights but remains subjected to the requirement of conformity with the liberal provisions.