Prof Shannon Hoctor from the Department of Public Law in the Faculty of Law at Stellenbosch 万博体育官网 delivered his inaugural lecture on Thursday 2 November 2023. The title of his lecture was “Sharpening the subjective element of criminal liability in South African law".
Hoctor spoke to the Corporate Communication and Marketing Division about how his research is aimed at helping to affect the future development and application of the law, especially substantive criminal law, in South Africa.
Tell us more about your research and why you became interested in this specific field.
While I have dabbled in a number of areas, my primary research has been in the area of substantive criminal law, in other words the rules governing criminal liability. From an early age I have been an avid reader of crime fiction, so the motivation for criminal conduct has always been an interest of mine: Why do people do bad things? My first degree was a BA majoring in Law and Psychology, which gave some theoretical structure to my musings, and when I finally encountered Criminal Law in the first year of my postgraduate LLB at UCT, taught by the inspirational Solly Leeman, I experienced a fierce joy in engaging with and researching Criminal Law theory. I've never looked back!
How would you describe the relevance of your work, especially for South Africa?
Given the crisis of criminality in South Africa, I think that developing skilled, passionate and ethical criminal justice practitioners is an extremely high calling. The opportunity to systematically analyse and criticise legal developments and trends, and in so doing affect the future development and application of the law is equally a very significant and important endeavour.
Our criminal justice system has come under a lot of criticism. What do you think should be done to improve it?
I think that, in general, we can be very positive about the rules and structure of our system of criminal justice. The justifiable criticism of the criminal justice system relates to issues of lack of capacity, problems with enforcement, delays and inequality of treatment. All these factors can undermine the legal process and bring it into disrepute. It is necessary to continually evaluate the effectiveness of the rules we use and hold them up to the standards and guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The problems associated with enforcement are much harder to solve and can't be resolved without political will and principled leadership.
You have already spent many years in the challenging environment of higher education. What keeps you motivated when things get tough?
I love my job. I love teaching, as after all my years in the job, I never fail to learn something from my interaction with students. The thrill of seeing that students understand what I am teaching, and even better, are enjoying the material with me, is extremely rewarding. I love research, and the opportunity to continue learning and challenging my own perspectives is indeed a wonderful privilege. There are less enjoyable parts of the academic enterprise – marking does not get any better the longer you are in the job – but when things get tough, I just need to remind myself of these joys.
Tell us something exciting about yourself that people would not expect.
I have made red wine a number of times. Once, properly and surprisingly well, with fermentation and thermometers and bottles and labels. Since then, being away from the Cape for almost two decades, I made do with an extremely basic recipe, where the wine was just about drinkable. The fun involved in treading out the grapes with my daughters made the whole process more than worthwhile.
How do you spend your free time?
I love spending time with my family, listening to music and having leisure time for reading. If I can combine the elements of family, red wine, preparing and eating good food, music, and dancing in the kitchen, life is very good indeed.
- Photo by Ignus Dreyer ((Stellenbosch Centre for Photographic Services)?
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