Albie Sachs

Albie Sachs (1935-) is a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He was appointed to the court by Nelson Mandela in 1994.

Justice Sachs recently gained international attention in 2005 as the author of the Court's holding in the case of "Minister of Home Affairs v. Fourie", in which the Court overthrew South Africa's statute defining marriage to be between one man and one woman as a violation of the Constitution's general mandate for equal protection for all and its specific mandate against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Justice Sachs is also recognized for the development of the differentiation between constitutional rights in three different degrees or generations of rights.

As a young white man in South Africa, he worked as an attorney, defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws under South African Apartheid. After being seized by the police and placed in solitary confinement for his work in the freedom movement, Albie Sachs went into exile in England and then Mozambique. In Maputo, Mozambique in 1988, he lost his arm and his sight in one eye when a bomb was placed in his car by South African security agents. After the bombing, he devoted himself to the preparations for a new democratic constitution for South Africa. He returned to South Africa and served as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the African National Congress.

In 1991 he won the Alan Paton Award for his book "Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter". The book chronicles his response to the 1988 car bombing. He is also the author of "Justice in South Africa" (1974), "The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs" (1966), "Sexism and the Law" (1979) and, most recently, "The Free Diary of Albie Sachs" (2004).

He helped select the art collection at Constitution Hill, the seat of the Constitutional Court.

External links

* [http://www.constitutionalcourt.org.za/text/judges/current/justicealbiesachs/1.html Biography at the Constitutional Court of South Africa website]
* [http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Sachs/sachs-con0.html An interview with Albie Sachs] by the "Conversations with History" program of the Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
* [http://audio.wbez.org/wv/2007/03/wv_20070329a.m3u Interview with Justice Sachs] on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview program.
* Hear his talk, [http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/sachs.html "The South African Court Looks At Same-Sex Marriages: The Fourie Case,"] at the University of Chicago.