Abstract

The constitutional laws of non-unified legal systems provide many crucial answers in matters of internal conflict of laws. This aspect has been explored rather often in South African scholarly writing, but the preceding questions in relation to identifying the appropriate court and the applicable law have seldom been investigated. This article is a first, tentative step to link the models of multiculturalism to Conflict of Laws. It investigates whether the Conflict of Laws model for dividing jurisdiction and selecting the applicable law manages to avoid the basic problems of the models of multiculturalism, and whether this model is helpful in refining the transformative accommodation promised by the models of multiculturalism. It illustrates the capacity of Conflict of Laws to kick-start co-ordination among diverse legal systems and prompt courts towards transformative accommodation, as well as its latent potential for refining transformative accommodation. This potential reveals itself when hidden stumbling blocks are identified with accuracy.