Dennis Davis

David Martin Dennis (born 1 May 1951) is a South African legal academic, jurist, and retired judge who was the Judge President of the Competition Appeal Court between 2000 and 2020. He served concurrently as a judge of the Western Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa between 1998 and 2020. Retired from the bench since December 2020, he is currently an emeritus professor at the University of Cape Town and the chairperson of the Companies Tribunal.

Early life and education Davis was born on 1 May 1951 in Cape Town. He was raised in a working-class Jewish family – his father was a motor mechanic and his mother was a legal secretary – and attended Herzlia School in Cape Town, where he, later said, he was taught orthodox Zionist "rubbish". However, as a teenager, he was heavily influenced by an English class on Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country, as well as by his experience in Habonim, where his group leader, a young John Comaroff, exposed him to the works of Karl Marx.

Attracted by law's potential "to undo injustice in the world", He was admitted as an advocate of the Supreme Court in 1977. During this period, amid the negotiations to end apartheid, Davis joined the African National Congress when it was unbanned in 1990. Davis's public commentary during this period led to a notorious televised altercation with Barney Pityana, who called Davis a racist and whom Davis demanded should resign from the South African Human Rights Commission.

After the 1994 general election, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies became closely involved in constitutional litigation, He also overturned the appointment of Hlaudi Motsoeneng as chief operating officer of the SABC.

At the same time, he handed down several landmark judgements in public and constitutional law. Government v Grootboom, a landmark Constitutional Court case which upheld the justiciability of socioeconomic rights, upheld a High Court judgement written by Davis in 2000. Likewise, the decriminalisation of personal marijuana use, ordered by the Constitutional Court in Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development v Prince, originated in a 2017 judgement by Davis, which argued that criminalisation unjustifiably limited the constitutional right to privacy. Also notable was his 2004 judgement that sections of the Maintenance of the Surviving Spouse Act were unconstitutional insofar as they discriminated against unmarried life-partners, although that judgement was overturned by the Constitutional Court majority in Volks v Robinson.

In 2003, Judge Robin Marais of the Supreme Court of Appeal wrote a minority judgement in an appeal from Davis's court, Shoprite Checkers v Bumpers Schwarmas, specifically to chastise Davis for repeating witnesses' "lavatorial" language (the expressions "stuff you", "gatvol", and "bullshit") in a judgement which was subsequently published in the law reports.

Competition Appeal Court: 2000–2020 In October 1999, alongside his High Court colleague Selwyn Selikowitz, Davis was interviewed by the Judicial Service Commission as a candidate for possible appointment to the newly established Competition Appeal Court. Early the following year, he was appointed to the appeal court and named as its inaugural Judge President.

In 2011–2012 in the Competition Appeal Court, Davis presided in the government's attempt to block a proposed merger between Walmart and Massmart. In March 2012, he dismissed the government's application, finding that the benefits of the merger outweighed its costs, but he acknowledged that the costs were nonetheless significant and attached additional conditions to the transaction, including the reinstatement of retrenched employees and a formal assessment of possible measures to localise the benefits of the merger. Ebrahim Patel, the Minister of Economic Development, welcomed the judgement, which he said, "goes a long way to addressing how we can deal with consequences of the merger". Minister of Economic Development v Competition Tribunal, South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union v Wal-Mart Stores, which was co-written with Judge Dumisani Zondi, set significant precedent in competition law and particularly in the interpretation of the so-called public interest clause of the Competition Act.

Labour Appeal Court: 2007–2018 In December 2007, President Thabo Mbeki appointed Davis to the Labour Appeal Court, where he served until 2018.

Constitutional Court nomination: 2009 In 2009, with four vacancies expected to arise on the Constitutional Court bench, Davis – then the only white judge president in the country – was considered a favourite among members of the legal community. The Judicial Service Commission shortlisted him for elevation and interviewed him in September 2009. During the interview, he responded coldly to questioning from commissioner Cecil Burgess about his relationship with John Hlophe, the Judge President of the Western Cape Division; when pressed, he said that he and Hlophe had profound ideological differences. He was also confronted about missing a judicial conference to go on holiday, a point raised by candidate Mogoeng Mogoeng – Davis explained that he had been climbing Mount Kilimanjaro at the time – and about the ostensible "high rate" of appeals of his judgement – he explained that only 27 of 140 reported judgements had been appealed, and only 12 of them overturned. In subsequent years, he did not apply again for elevation to the Constitutional Court, later joking that the interviews were too long for his liking. The committee was established in July 2013 by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan; outlining the terms of reference, he and Davis pointed to the development of new forms of base erosion and profit shifting that arose from globalised forms of economic activity and contemporary revenue streams. During its tenure, the committee met 205 times and submitted 25 reports. It submitted its final four reports in April 2018. Because Davis was still a sitting judge, his work for the committee was unpaid. In response to these reports, SARS published a statement accusing Davis of having "for some time now behaved in a manner that could be perceived as advocating a veiled strategy to mobilise a possibility of a tax revolt by taxpayers against the state... SARS has lost all confidence and respect for Judge Davis". In August 2018, Davis testified before the Nugent Commission about the breakdown in relations between Moyane and his committee.

Public engagement and political views From October 2004 onwards, while a sitting judge, Davis hosted Judge for Yourself, a current affairs programme on E.tv. Through this and other forums, he was unusually active, among sitting judges, in public and policy debate, though Paul Hoffman observed in the Mail & Guardian that he was "fond of utilising the pregnant rhetorical question as a device to stimulate controversy in which he is then not implicated". Among other things, during his time as a sitting judge, he argued publicly in favour of a wealth tax, against the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach to land expropriation, and against the 2008–2009 Israeli bombardment of Gaza. However, Davis reflected in 2021 that his politics moderated during his time on the bench and that he no longer hoped for the Constitution to be "revolutionary" as much as he hoped for it to be "seriously social democratic in a profound way". and during the same period, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni commissioned him to conduct an assessment of the tax gap in South Africa.

Retirement Davis retired from the bench in December 2020. However, he continued to teach at the University of Cape Town, lifestyle audits of wealthy individuals, treating baseless political attacks on the judiciary as contempt of court offences, and empowering SARS to institute criminal prosecution of non-compliant taxpayers.

Soon after his retirement, in early 2021, SARS announced that it had retained Davis's services as a consultant. In December 2022, he was additionally appointed as the chairperson of the Companies Tribunal. In the latter capacity, he mediated the Spar Group's agreement to phase exclusive lease agreements in retail centres.

In November 2023, Davis was recalled to the Competition Appeal Court bench to hear further applications in the so-called rand-rigging case, in which the Competition Commission sought to charge 28 foreign and domestic banks with colluding to manipulate the rand. He had presided in other applications in the matter in 2020, before his retirement.

Personal life He is married to Claudette Davis, with whom he has two children, He was formerly the chairperson of the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies from 2003 to 2005.