It is an honour to contribute to this book celebrating Lady Hale’s remarkable contribution as a judge. That contribution has extended well beyond the United Kingdom and in this short chapter, written to pay a small tribute to her large contribution as a judge and scholar, I shall describe the reliance on her jurisprudence by South African courts, and use that reliance to assess the history of the use of foreign precedents by South African judges as part of the ongoing global conversations about the legitimacy of domestic courts’ use of foreign precedent in their judicial reasoning.

According to the online free-access law reporter SAFLII, Lady Hale has been mentioned sixteen times in South African courts – twice in the Constitutional Court, eight times in the Supreme Court of Appeal and six times in the High Courts or courts of equivalent jurisdiction. The citations have related to diverse areas of the law. Five of the cases in which she has been cited have concerned the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.