August 22, 2021
In association with the Southern African Public Law Journal (SAPL), the Public Law Corner (PLC) is a contemporary space for legal practitioners, students, academics, and people beyond the legal sector to engage with relevant and current legal issues related to public law. Our main aim is to amplify all voices and issues in public law that are often excluded from formal publications.
As a group of young lawyers and academics working on and undertaking research in the public law space, we noticed a gap in digital media and academia: the absence of a digital media platform for legal researchers, academics, and activists. This idea was borne out of the frustration of the young people on the editorial team who were searching for a community with which to unpack legal developments, debate emerging legal trends, and reflect on the efficacy of law in advancing positive change.
PLC endeavours to create safe, accessible, and inclusive spaces for people to share their thoughts and insights on a diverse range of topics, from human rights to intellectual property, and customary law, to technology, and everything in between. We encourage robust debate around developing jurisprudence, law reform, and regional and international legal trends.
PLC will act as an extension of SAPL, as a platform where writers of varied backgrounds and interests can engage with new and interesting concepts, share ideas, and find innovative ways to make the law more accessible, tangible, and meaningful. We, therefore, welcome all legal practitioners, students, and academics to contribute short written articles, commentary, op-eds, artistic expressions and legal opinions to the PLC to bridge the gap between law and reality.
Author Guidelines
Public Law Corner accepts submissions that are analytical, insightful and not previously published elsewhere. The blog guides prospective authors to submit articles in line with the following structures:
Ensure that your manuscript is not a simultaneous submission, and that it has not been published elsewhere. We do not accept previously published work.?
Submit your work in MS Word or doc format. Use size 12 font, double-spaced, Times New Roman with one-inch margins.
All submissions must be limited to a word count of 800-1300 words. Authors must ensure that they adhere to this word count, or alternatively request special permission from the editors if they seek to exceed the specified word count.
No footnotes and endnotes are necessary. Authors must reference by either use of hyperlinks or in-text referencing.
No abstracts, bibliographies and keywords are required.
Although subheadings are allowed, they are discouraged. Instead, authors should organise their manuscripts in the format of an essay/Op-Ed. When subheadings are used, these should be numbered and must be in the same font and style of the main text. This is the title of the article or note: a colon is followed by lower case 1. First sub-heading 1.1 Second sub-heading 1.1.1 Third sub-heading
Numbers from one to twenty are spelt out in words, unless they refer to section or schedule numbers in statutes. Numbers from 21 onwards are written numerically.
Authors are given discretion to refer to varying source materials. However, the chosen reference method must be concise and consistent. For example, when referring to case law, the author may reference Maledu v Itereleng Bakgatla Mineral Resources [2018] ZACC 4 and thereafter the Maledu case.
Use UK English E.g: -ise endings / -sation – civilisation, rationalise, idealise. - Public Law Corner uses very little punctuation. There are no full stops after abbreviations (so for example use US instead of U.S.) or after the v (for versus) between the party names of a case.
All submissions must be uploaded to https://upjournals.co.za/index.php/SAPL/ in the PLC section.
For more information, click here.