University of North Carolina School of Law Carolina Law Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 2016 Comparative Perspectives on Strategic Remedial Delays Holning S. Lau University of North Carolina School of Law,
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[email protected]. Comparative Perspectives on Strategic Remedial Delays Holning Lau* In controversial constitutional cases, courts sometimes grant the government an extended period of time to correct rights violations—what I call “remedial grace periods”— hoping that the postponed implementation of change will temper backlash. The most well- known example of such remedial delay followed the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education II. This Article spotlights a more recent remedial grace period. In Minister of Home Affairs v. Fourie, South Africa’s highest court ruled that depriving same-sex couples of marriage was unconstitutional. It could have implemented same-sex marriage immediately by reading it into the law, but it chose not to. Instead, it sought to defuse controversy by giving Parliament time to remedy the situation legislatively. Fourie’s grace period complicates prevailing wisdom about grace periods that derives from Brown II. Part I of this Article provides background by comparing remedial grace periods to other judicial delay tactics.