In the leading South African case of The State v. Makwanyane and Mchunu, Ishmail Mohamed, J., (as he then was) with his characteristic eloquence observed that
“all Constitutions seek to articulate, with differing degrees of intensity and detail, the shared aspirations of a nation; the values which bind its people, and which discipline its government and its national institutions, the basic premises upon which judicial, legislative and executive power is to be wielded; the Constitutional limits and the conditions upon which that power is to be exercised, the national ethos which defines and regulates that exercise, and the moral and ethical direction which the nation has identified for its future” (at para. 262).