Zimbabwe’s Contribution to the Transnational Judicial Dialogue on Corporal Punishment

On April 3, 2019, the Zimbabwe Constitutional Court found unconstitutional moderate corporal punishment on a juvenile male in State v Chokuramba. The decision in Chokuramba was a victory for transnational human rights litigation, as the Court widely cited and applied international and foreign law to discern a global trend, especially the precedents of near neighbors Namibia and South Africa in an important example of South-South dialogue. This article views litigation as a method of norm diffusion, in which transnational litigators serve as norm entrepreneurs who articulate and advance a right through international and foreign legal citations. In pleadings, whether as counsel, amici, or third-party intervenors, lawyers advance human rights norms by building a body of comparative jurisprudence that can be cited in later cases. Chokuramba was a foundational precedent in a Commonwealth-wide “norm cascade” toward abolition of judicial corporal punishment for juveniles.