Volume 17, No. 2
February 2003

IALL Course 2003: International Association of Law Libraries: New Rights - New Laws: Legal Information in a Changing World

Submitted by Jules Winterton

21st-25th September 2003 at the University of Cape Town's Breakwater Campus, Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa. Preliminary details at http://www.iall.org/iall2003/
The annual course in international law librarianship is the Association's main meeting and educational event of the year. There are three main themes this year: Law and Social Change, Rights and Law, South African law and legal literature. We shall be exploring no less than the remaking of a legal system. Sessions will explore the rewriting of the Constitution and the work of the Constitutional Court, and the information services to support it, rights in action, land reform, economic rights, and welfare law, dealing with the past in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the creation of a new legal order dealing with the disparities within society. We will be assisted in understanding the mixed system of common law and Roman-Dutch law and the systems of indigenous law and their interplay. The great project of creating a new legal system here where so many different traditions meet will be of importance to anyone who believes major social change can be achieved by working within the legal order. At a time when South Africa is looking out to other legal systems, we can all learn by looking at the changes it has achieved.