South Africans Find Legal Reform Ideas on L.A. Visit : Law: Legislators will draft their nation’s new constitution. They question local judges and academics about the U.S. system.

A group of top South African legislators out to revamp their country’s legal system met with Los Angeles judges and academics Monday, grilling them on everything from constitutional law and the death penalty to televised trials.

“We are undergoing a very profound transformation,” said Gert B. Myburgh, a member of South Africa’s parliament and the chairman of its Joint Committee on Justice in South Africa. “We are interested in learning whatever we can that may assist that process.”

Their bags brimming with U.S. jurisprudence, the visitors ended their 10-day U.S. mission Monday.

U.S. District Judge Irving Hill, who hosted a morning session with the South African delegation, said it offered a rare chance for judges here to assist the process of change in South Africa. That country is struggling to end white minority rule and is in the midst of complex negotiations to draft a new constitution.

Hill, along with several other members of the federal bench in Los Angeles, fielded questions from the interracial, eight-member South African delegation for an hour Monday. Although the meeting was closed to the public, judges and members of the South African delegation said later that they had discussed historical questions about the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, as well as modern-day issues such as affirmative action.

“The delegates were very interested in the American experience with affirmative action,” said Tracy Hendriks, vice consul with the South African Consulate in Beverly Hills. “They talked about some of the gains and some of the shortfalls of that system.”

Judge Consuelo B. Marshall said the South Africans are considering writing a clause into their constitution that specifically addresses affirmative action, but they worry that it could conflict with other sections of the document.

“They wanted to know how judges would go about resolving this,” Marshall said. “We talked to them about what our Supreme Court is doing with that issue.”

The drafting of a new South African constitution has offered the chance for national leaders of that country to re-examine their judicial system and to learn from the example of other nations, members of the delegation said. The group already has visited several European countries, where delegates studied human rights and the ability of courts to safeguard them.

The delegation included top judiciary experts from each of South Africa’s major political parties. They found some U.S. institutions appealing.

Trial by jury, for instance, once was permitted in South Africa, but it has languished, leaving little opportunity for accused criminals to be judged by their peers. Myburgh said that reintroducing some sort of community voice in trials, perhaps by appointing magistrate panels that included local representatives, might give South Africa some of the benefits of the American jury system.

But if affirmative action and trial by jury stirred interest among some of the South African delegates, other traditions were more coolly received.

“In our country, leaders often go out of their way to appoint judges who have a different philosophy, if only to show that they are independent,” Myburgh said. “Here, your politicians seem to appoint judges of like-mind. That is very curious.”

Similarly, some delegates were puzzled by the shifting U.S. judicial consensus on the death penalty.

Before arriving in Los Angeles, the delegates visited judicial training centers in Washington and Reno. After meeting with the judges, they traveled across town to visit the law faculty of Loyola Marymount, where they held the final session of their trip.

“I think these kinds of meetings are important to the future of their country,” said Gerald McLaughlin, dean of the Loyola Marymount law school. “It’s important from our perspective to help them in any way we can.”