Jackie Dugard is a Senior Lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights and Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights. She joined ISHR in the Fall of 2022. With a background in law and social sciences - BA (Hons) & LLB (Wits); MPhil & PhD (Cambridge); and LLM (Essex) - Jackie focuses on power and exclusion. She has published widely on socio-economic rights (especially the rights to housing, land, and water), property law, access to justice, the role of law and courts in social change, protest and social movements, and gender-based violence. Jackie is the lead co-editor (Jackie Dugard, Bruce Porter, Daniela Ikawa, and Lilian Chenwi) of Edward Elgar’s (2020) Research Handbook on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as Human Rights. Her recent published articles include: “Xolobeni’s struggle against patriracial-colonocapitalist mining in South Africa: A counterpoint to climate catastrophe?” 14(4) Wisconsin International Law Journal 551-576, 2024 and “Water rights struggles in Johannesburg and Detroit revisited: Looking beyond courts at the politics and power of rights-based legal mobilization in a neoliberal global order - a ‘powerpack’ analysis” 15(1) Journal of Human Rights Practice 46-65, 2023.
In this interview, Jackie shares more about her background, the classes she will teach this academic year, book recommendations, and more.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to pursue a career in human rights?
I grew up in South Africa under apartheid in an anti-apartheid family, with a father who was (and still is) a human rights lawyer and scholar - so the quest for social justice has been hard-wired into my professional and personal life.
What courses will you be teaching this academic year? What inspired you to design and teach these particular courses?
This academic year I’ll be teaching International Human Rights Law (in the Fall and Spring semesters), which is a core HRSMA course; as well as Socio-Economic Rights (Fall) and Climate Justice (Spring), which are elective courses. My background is in law and social sciences, so my courses tend to combine legal frameworks and critical analysis. In the context of widening economic inequality and climate fragility, I’m interested in examining these closely related issues and contributing towards scholarship and activism around economic and climate justice.
Can you tell us a bit about your current research or other projects you are working on? What made you want to focus on this specific topic or this particular area of human rights?
I’m involved in a 6-country (Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, and South Africa) Norwegian-funded research project on the impact of the enactment of plural land rights on vulnerable groups. As a socio-economic rights scholar and activist who used to teach Property Law in South Africa, I’m interested in the relationship between the law and land regimes, and this project provides the opportunity to interrogate the relationship between land rights and socio-economic inclusion across six key countries.
In June, my funding proposal submitted to Columbia’s InciteBreakdown/(Re)generation Project was accepted, to research the paradox and promise of “South African Indigenous struggles against mining, and for (re)generative socio-economic alternatives, in the context of climate change”. Against the backdrop of a looming climate catastrophe, this project will analyze litigation brought by Indigenous groups in South Africa against mining (as a socially, economically, and environmentally harmful activity), to examine whether such litigation engages “ambitious imaginaries of disruptive transformation” that challenge the prevailing economic development paradigm and assert alternative, more sustainable socio-economic paradigms. The project - which will entail socio-legal analysis of the court papers as well as ethnographic interviews with Indigenous groups - will explore the impact of such litigation in protecting Indigenous land and ways of life from destructive encroachment, as well as the paradox of relying on Indigenous communities (who have benefited the least from the dominant economic paradigm) to rescue everyone and everything from climate extinction.
What do you enjoy most about teaching? How do you engage with students on difficult or contentious topics?
I love the small-class, seminar format of classes in the HRSMA program - from a teaching perspective, this allows the lecturer to introduce the key frameworks or debates and then spend optimal time discussing and critiquing the relevant issues. I’ve found that grounding discussions in legal frameworks and normative human rights standards provides a strong basis from which to discuss difficult or contentious topics. I’ve also found it helpful to establish agreed parameters at the outset with each new cohort and to underscore that human rights strive to act as an accountability mechanism for states - as such, they are not aimed at criticizing any specific individuals or groups.
Can you describe a particularly memorable moment or event from your human rights work that has stayed with you over the years?
After litigating and losing the first (and only) Constitutional Court water rights case in South Africa, I phoned one of my clients (from Soweto township) to tearfully express my sadness and disappointment about having lost the case. She paused for a moment and then said: “I’m very sorry for you, Jackie, but do you know that I’m going to be on TV tonight”. For Grace, the judicial outcome of the case wasn’t as important as the more intangible impacts from the litigation of being heard and having her struggle recognized. This is how I poignantly learned about the symbolic and latent power of litigation.
What is the one book you would recommend to any student pursuing a career in human rights?
