See video below
Justice Albie Sachs • Tuesday, April 15, 2014
LHS Little Theater: 9:55 to 10:50 (meet and greet 11:00 to 12:00 headmaster’s conference room)
About our speaker: Justice Albie Sachs, of the South African Constitutional Court
Justice Albie Sachs • Tuesday, April 15, 2014
LHS Little Theater: 9:55 to 10:50 (meet and greet 11:00 to 12:00 headmaster’s conference room)
About our speaker: Justice Albie Sachs, of the South African Constitutional Court
- Justice Sachs is at LHS as a fellow of the Dana McLean Greeley Endowment for Peace Studies at UML.
- The Greeley Scholar for Peace Studies at UML is part of the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute there.
- Justice Sachs was appointed to the South African Constitutional Court in 1994 by President Nelson Mandela.
- Justice Sachs remained on the Court until 2009 and was instrumental in shaping the post-Apartheid constitution in South Africa, putting South African law at the vanguard of international human rights practice, and also in liberalizing the legal environment in South Africa around gay rights, writing a 2005 opinion from the bench that legalized same-sex marriage in South Africa.
- Justice Sachs’ human rights work reaches far back into the early 1950s, when as a law student at the University of Cape Town, he participated in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. He defended opponents of the apartheid regime – and citizens charged under its racist laws – beginning at the age of 21. The apartheid government struck back at him, placing him solitary confinement for long periods of time (without due process) twice.
- Justice Sachs went into exile in 1966 and moved to the United Kingdom, where he worked for 11 years. After that, he lived and worked for 11 years in Mozambique as a law professor and researcher.
- In April 1988 he was the victim of a bombing by the South African security services. He lost an arm and the sight in one eye as a result. His response to this was to work on a constitutional project for a post-apartheid South Africa while he was recovering.
- He returned to South Africa in 1990, as a member of the Constitutional Committee of the national executive of the African National Congress. As mentioned, he was appointed to the Constitutional Court in 1994 by President Mandela.
- Since his retirement from the bench, Justice Sachs has traveled extensively and talked especially about the concept of restorative justice and the ways in which South Africa has sought to use the law to heal the nation.
