Prof. Theunis Roux from the University of New South Wales Visits NLSIU | November 2023
November 9, 2023
At the start of our second trimester of AY 2023-24, we are delighted to host Dr. Theunis Roux, Professor and Head, School of Global and Public Law, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, at NLSIU. Prof. Roux is an acclaimed scholar of South African constitutional law, and a leading scholar in the field of comparative constitutional law.
Prof. Roux is at our campus till Nov 14, 2023 as Visiting Professor with the V.R. Krishna Iyer Chair on Public Law & Policy Choice at NLSIU. During this time, he will be engaged with several activities as well as forging links with NLS more broadly:
Teaching engagement: He will be co-teaching an elective course on ‘Constitutionalism in the Global South’ along with Prof. Arun Thiruvengadam for this trimester. This course will focus on Indian and South African constitutionalism. This elective is a fresh course that will draw from their ongoing research and will also enable them to carry forward their earlier collaboration into the classroom. The two academics hope that the experience of devising a course on themes that are an integral part of their research will enhance the chances of their future collaboration here at NLSIU.
Research focus: Prof. Roux will be meeting with other scholars at NLS, particularly those whose research interests are aligned with his focus on comparative public law. Prof Roux was also the head of the PhD programme at UNSW and will be meeting with the Doctoral Council to share his insights into delivering a top notch PhD programme. Besides this, he will also be attending the weekly Faculty Seminars to obtain a sense of the intellectual climate at NLS.
Administrative meetings: We also hope to tap into Prof. Roux’s administrative experience at various universities in South Africa and Australia to obtain ideas about fine tuning aspects of our academic programmes at NLS. As Head of School, Prof. Roux has considerable experience in navigating administrative and academic matters – be it students studying the same subject across several sections, or coordinating teaching and assessment between these cross sections, etc. He will be meeting with members of the NLSIU’s Academic Review Committee (ARC) to further discuss such issues and also provide his insights on how UNSW tackles similar challenges.
Prof. Roux will conclude his visit by attending a meeting with the Dean of the UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice, Prof. Andrew Lynch, UNSW Associate Dean International, Prof. Christine Forster, and the NLSIU’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, to explore the possibility of an MoU between NLSIU and UNSW.
This is Prof. Roux’s second visit to NLSIU. During his first visit in November 2022, he presented his paper on “Grand Narratives of Transition and the Quest for Democratic Constitutionalism in India and South Africa” during a faculty seminar on campus. In fact, many of his other books and articles on the constitutions and laws of various nations, including India, are much cited. His first book on the tenure of South Africa’s first Chief Justice, Arthur Chaskalson’s influential term in the first decade of the working of the South African Constitution is regarded as a classic work.
Interview with Prof. Theunis Roux
In an interview at NLS, Prof. Roux shared more about what stimulated his interest in the field of constitutional law, early influences that shaped him and his career.
On his early years and influences:
I was born in Zimbabwe in 1967. My father was a landscape artist and portrait painter, but he also ran a small farm that was attached to a mission station that his father had established. My birth took place two years after the Ian Smith government’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, which my father rightly predicted would lead to the then Rhodesia’s international isolation and a reduced market for his paintings. So, our family moved to Cape Town which is where I spent the first half of my life growing up.
I studied law at the University of Cape Town in the 1980s during a very fraught time in South Africa. Several national emergencies were declared in that decade, as apartheid started to unravel. The whole atmosphere was very politicised and many law professors were deeply involved in the transition to democracy. One professor of mine, Kate O’Regan, went on to become a Judge of the Constitutional Court. She was very influential in my career, drawing me into a think-tank called the African National Congress Land Claims Working Group.
My work in that think-tank was to research property restitution models in different countries, including Germany and Australia. When Germany reunified, there was a restitution of property process for property lost in East Germany. In Australia, the Mabo decision had just been handed down, followed by the passing of the Native Title Act. These were just some of the countries that I looked at in the early 1990s while also thinking of land restitution in South Africa. It was that experience that stimulated my interest in comparative constitutional law.
Recollections during his time in South Africa in the 1980s (a State of Emergency was declared in 1985)
I recall two specific moments during this time that have stayed with me:
a) I was a studious guy and not one to join student demonstrations. One day I was coming out of the University library and walking down the stairwell when I saw a riot policeman chasing a student with a quirt (cross between a baton and a whip). That moment of violence, and the contrast between the student’s physical commitment to the struggle and my detached scholarly commitment, has stayed with me ever since.
b) I had befriended an African man at a time when friendships between people of different races were rare. He asked me to come to a township (informal settlement) in Cape Town with him. So we drove together in my brother’s car with an Eastern Cape registration, which fortunately camouflaged it as there were a lot of cars from that region in the township. I remember the thrill of crossing literal and figurative racial barriers for the first time. It is hard to explain that emotion to people who have not grown up in a racially segregated society. It was probably my first experience of throwing off the social codes that keep you separated from the rest of the people in your country. I was around 21-22 years at the time. On the way back, I was stopped by the security police and interrogated. I think they thought I had been running guns, but all they found was a copy of the Law Faculty student magazine.