Standing on Unsteady Ground: AREVA NP Incorporated in France v Eskom SOC LTD
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2019/v22i0a3285Keywords:
locus standi, legal standing, public-procurement law, substantive reasoning, transformative adjudicationAbstract
Areva NP Incorporated in France v Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd 2017 6 BCLR 675 (CC) was a dispute over a multi-billion-rand tender. Although the majority of the Constitutional Court recognised the public importance of the case, it adjudicated the dispute entirely on a preliminary point. It found that the applicant did not have legal standing to seek the judicial review of the award of the tender.
This case note has three aims. First, I will argue that the Constitutional Court's majority judgment in Areva was generally unpersuasive. Second, I will attempt to show that Areva exposes an unresolved legal question: when should a court consider the merits of a case made by a litigant with questionable standing? Third, I will propose a method for resolving this question by way of substantive judicial reasoning in any given case.
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