The City
Every subject is a place in the Cathedral City, laid out in five quarters that mirror how South African law is classified. Finding a subject is itself a lesson in where it sits — walk to the Government Quarter for a public-law problem, the Market for a private one.
Foundations
The Old Town
How law works before you reach any single subject — its sources, its reasoning, and the skills every other subject assumes.
The Palace of Law
Introduction to Law
Thirteen chambers spanning the foundations of law — the Constitution, legal sources, courts, procedure, and professional skills.
The Scriptorium
Legal Skills & Research
Finding the law, reading a case, citing authority, and writing the answer — the craft skills the rest of the degree takes for granted.
The Forum
Jurisprudence
What law is and why it binds — the theories of law and justice that sit underneath every rule you will ever apply.
Public law
The Government Quarter
The relationship between the state and the individual — the powers the state holds and the limits the law places on them.
The Criminal Courts
Criminal Law
The elements of each offence mapped district by district — from the Gate of Legality to the Citadel of Consent. Definitions, fault elements, and leading cases.
The Assembly
Constitutional Law
The supreme law — the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, and how the Constitution disciplines every branch of the state.
The Chancery
Administrative Law
The rules that keep public power lawful — when an official may act, and when a court will review the decision.
The Treasury
Tax Law
How the state raises revenue — the framework of taxation and the duties it places on the citizen.
Embassy Row
Public International Law
The law between states — treaties, custom, and the place of international law in the domestic legal order.
Private law
The Residential & Market Quarter
Relationships between individuals and entities — persons, families, property, agreements, and the wrongs that pass between them.
The Lifeline
Law of Persons
Legal personality, capacity, status, and domicile — mapped as a journey from birth to death through the landmarks of legal existence.
The Household
Family Law
Engagement, marriage, matrimonial property, divorce, customary and civil unions, children, and domestic violence — a home you build, inhabit and sometimes leave, room by room.
The Exchange
Law of Contract
How binding agreements are formed, performed, and broken — offer, acceptance, and the remedies when a promise fails.
The Court of Wrongs
Law of Delict
Liability for harm wrongfully caused — the elements of a delict and the reach of the Aquilian action.
The Estates
Law of Property
Ownership, possession, and the real rights that attach to things — movable, immovable, and everything registered against it.
The Chapel of Rest
Law of Succession
What becomes of an estate at death — testate and intestate succession, wills, and the administration of the deceased estate.
The Guildhall
Commercial Law
The law of business — companies, partnerships, insolvency, and the instruments that move money through the market.
Procedural law
The Courts Precinct
The machinery for enforcing substantive rights — how a rule is read, proven, and applied in a real court.
The Cathedral
Interpretation of Statutes
From the Foundation Wing to the Application Courtroom — every tool of statutory interpretation anchored in a spatial memory journey at the heart of the City.
The Civil Registry
Civil Procedure
How a private dispute moves through the courts — jurisdiction, pleadings, and the road from summons to judgment.
The Charge Office
Criminal Procedure
The route of a criminal case — arrest, bail, trial, and the constitutional safeguards that run through each stage.
The Chamber of Proof
Law of Evidence
What a court may hear and how much it weighs — admissibility, relevance, and the burden of proof.
Cross-cutting subjects
The Borderlands
Fields that deliberately resist the public/private split, and the plural legal orders that run alongside the common law.
The Great Place
African Customary Law
Legal pluralism, living vs official law, constitutional recognition, customary marriage and succession, traditional leadership, ubuntu and land — the plural legal order, based on Rautenbach.
The Workshops
Labour Law
The law of the workplace — the employment relationship, unfair dismissal, and the machinery of collective bargaining.
The Commons
Environmental Law
The law that protects shared resources — the environmental right, sustainability, and the duties it places on all of us.