| Chapter 2: | Primary university qualifications to become a lawyer in the USA, the UK and South Africa |
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Yet, today, some of the top academicians in law schools of South Africa are foreign professionals from other African States. Most of these individuals obtained law degrees from their home country universities before pursuing graduate and postgraduate studies abroad. But how have these foreign professionals made it today in the same South Africa that used to deny foreign African LLB graduates admission to South African LLM programmes? Some of the arguments advanced against the admission of foreign African LLB graduates were that the South African LLB, like the American JD, was a graduate degree and, further, that South Africa followed the Roman-Dutch law system unlike many other African countries.
Although many LLM degree programmes in South Africa somewhat mirror the structure of other LLMs in the Commonwealth—that is, as a self-sustaining degree programme that is independent of the LLB curriculum—and not the typical American LLM which is usually a sandwich programme of the JD curriculum, many South African universities treated LLB degrees from other African universities with suspect. Yet, American law schools, for example, though having a graduate JD programme, like South Africa, did not discriminate against LLB graduates from credible African law schools. Neither did the UK law schools have difficulties in admitting African students to their LLM and PhD programmes. Nevertheless, the demise of apartheid in South Africa has now ended this indecent intellectual circus.
2.3 The American JD Degree
In the US, the JD degree is a first professional degree in law offered at graduate level.31 By contrast, the LLB degree in the UK and other Commonwealth States, as already pointed out, is a first professional degree in law offered at undergraduate level. That said, the American JD degree is neither a Masters degree nor a Doctorate degree. Commenting on the standard of the JD degree, Pappas observes: