ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an interpretive explanation for why constitutional rights protections – still opposed by all major South Africa's political players in 1980 – had become a universally adopted legitimation strategy before the post-apartheid transition began in 1990. It shows how the 'rights revolution' can account for why American charitable foundations, in particular, suddenly began favouring human rights litigation as a gradualist method for dismantling apartheid. The chapter presents how South African 'cause lawyers' have willingly supported high-profile cases in neighbouring countries, and have thus obtained symbolic advantages in domestic political contests. The US foundations helped transform the legal profession by supporting embryonic black lawyers' organisations. The Black Lawyers Association, founded in 1977, approached the Ford Foundation after its funding of the Legal Resources Centre. South Africa's post-apartheid constitution, famously, has no 'political question' doctrine shielding certain policy areas from judicial scrutiny.
