Michigan Law alumni Lara Geldsetzer, LLM ’24, and Marcie Rotblatt, ’24, are currently serving as clerks on South Africa’s highest court as it observes its 30th anniversary this year. As two of only a few foreign clerks, they have the rare opportunity to see how the Constitutional Court of South Africa interprets a constitution that was conceived in a post-apartheid period.
“The three biggest traditions the South African constitution drew on are Canada, the US, and Germany,” said Eric Christiansen, Michigan Law’s assistant dean for international affairs who clerked for the court in 2003. “So the court often has one US clerk, one Canadian clerk, and one German clerk.”
It is against this backdrop that Michigan Law established a relationship with the court to provide one to two clerks each year. The Law School’s connections with South Africa are extensive: Former Constitutional Court justices have visited campus, and each winter term nearly a dozen JD students work for public service organizations in Cape Town and Johannesburg through the South Africa Externship Program. Those students prepare for their externships by attending lectures with Karthy Govender, a member of the South African Human Rights Commission who visits Michigan Law to teach about the struggle for equality in his country.
Later this year, 3L Alyssa Schams will clerk for the court. (Additionally, clerks from the court often enroll in Michigan Law’s LLM program.) Christiansen added that clerks get a unique perspective on a relatively new constitution and court that prioritize social justice.
“It’s exciting for our students who are there because the South African constitution requires its courts to look at international law and the constitutional law of other countries for guidance, for ideas, and to see if they are aligned with, especially, human rights standards.”
Lara Geldsetzer, LLM ’24
Clerk for Chief Justice Mandisa Muriel Lindelwa Maya
Christiansen was influential in Lara Geldsetzer’s decision to clerk for the court: He shared stories of his experience as a clerk in South Africa, which was the first time she had heard much about the court. When she returned to her home country of Germany after earning her LLM, she started work on her PhD at the University of Münster with hopes of pursuing an academic career. After hearing more about the clerkship from a professor in her program, she decided to apply and was accepted for the two terms beginning in January and ending in June. Her takeaways from her experience thus far dovetail nicely with the topic she wants to pursue for her PhD.
“South Africa, especially the Constitutional Court, is very strong on what they call ‘transformative constitutionalism,’ basically using the law to institute societal changes,” she said. “It’s meant to counter the previous apartheid regime and be a positive, practical move in that direction.”
That perspective also affects the cases the court takes, Geldsetzer added. While it is a constitutional court, a 2017 constitutional amendment widened its scope to general jurisdiction; however, the cases still need to be of general public importance. For example, during her clerkship, one case has focused on the state’s duty to provide housing.
“Obviously, that’s really important in a country like South Africa, where they still struggle with a lot of inequality,” Geldsetzer said, adding that the clerkship has opened her eyes to the law happening in real time. “It is not like reading about it afterwards in a case book; instead, I’m getting to see how things actually are done in practice and how people who are at the top of the judiciary think about these cases.”
Marcie Rotblatt, ’24
Clerk for Justices Steven Arnold Majiedt and Narandra Jody Kollapen
For the past few years, Marcie Rotblatt has seized any international work or educational opportunity that’s come her way, whether it was pursuing her master’s degree at the London School of Economics, working as an extern in Michigan Law’s Geneva Externship program, or, currently, serving as a clerk in the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
“I always said I work at the intersection of human rights and refugee law,” she said. “But because of law school, I have really become a bit of a public international law generalist.”
Christiansen knew of her interest in international law—“I was a fixture in the CICL [Center for International and Comparative Law] office,” Rotblatt said—and thought of her when he first set up the program with the South African court. Thanks to funding from the Clara Belfield and Henry Bates Overseas Fellowship, Rotblatt has been able to extend her clerkship to four terms—from January to the end of this year. And the experience so far has not disappointed.
“I am very confident in saying that this is going to be, simultaneously, one of the hardest and also one of the most rewarding things I will probably do in my entire career,” said Rotblatt, who sometimes can’t believe she’s working with justices who were initially anti-apartheid lawyers and now shape the contours of South African law. She added that she has widened her knowledge of the law based on the variety of cases, which have ranged from tax cases to marital property cases.
“The court does the really amazing work of incorporating human rights and international law into domestic jurisprudence,” she said. “It’s humbling to work with the justices and be able to learn from them.”
Banner photo: Marcie Rotblatt, ’24, and Lara Geldsetzer, LLM ’24, are two of only a few international clerks serving in the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
