Retired Con­sti­tu­tional Court Judge Johann Krie­g­ler has asked the Gauteng High Court (Johan­nes­burg) to over­turn a rul­ing that he had ‘caused ser­i­ous harm to the judi­ciary’ when he said impeached West­ern Cape High Court Judge Pres­id­ent John Hlophe was ‘unfit to be a judge.’

According to Business Day, Kriegler says in his application: ‘The rul­ing and more par­tic­u­larly its reas­on­ing that I had brought the admin­is­tra­tion of justice into dis­rep­ute casts a shadow across what I have worked for all my life.’

The legal action against a JCC rul­ing, is led by non­profit organ­isa­tion Free­dom Under Law (FUL). It aims to clear him of the find­ing that he had breached the code of judi­cial con­duct. He wants the High Court to review and set aside the JCC find­ings.

The applic­a­tion will be a legal test of the lim­it­a­tions on the right of retired judges to express their views on judi­cial mat­ters.

Kriegler was the chair of FUL when he made the com­ment about Hlophe in an art­icle on the TimesLIVE web­site on 1 March 2021.

Advoc­ate Vuyani Ngal­wana filed a com­plaint in April 2021 against Krie­g­ler, cit­ing sev­eral remarks he made to the media and accused Kriegler of caus­ing ser­i­ous harm to the judi­ciary.

The first JCC rul­ing in 2022 found only one com­plaint con­sti­tuted a breach of the code: his com­ment that Hlophe was ‘unfit to be a judge.’

The JCC appeal rul­ing by retired Constitutional Court Judge Chris Jafta and two act­ing judges in Feb­ru­ary 2024 upheld the 2022 rul­ing.

Krie­g­ler dis­putes the find­ing and argues the judges in the JCC appeal com­mit­ted ‘ser­i­ous errors in law.’

The applic­a­tion is opposed but the respond­ents have yet to file court papers.

Full Business Day report