The Tenth Anniversary of South Africa's Constitutional Court
Lecture Date
3-10-2004
Recommended Citation
Goldstone, Richard J., "The Tenth Anniversary of South Africa's Constitutional Court" (2004). Howard and Iris Kaplan Memorial Lecture. 16.
https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/lectures_kaplan/16
Kaplan_2004_Goldstone.pdf (1215 kB)
promotional material - flyer
promotional material - flyer
COinS
Speaker Information
Richard J Goldstone graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA/LLB cum laude in 1962 and then practiced as an Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar. In 1976 he was appointed Senior Counsel and in 1980 was made Judge of the Transvaal Supreme Court. In 1989 he was appointed Judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. From July 1994 to October 2003 he was a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2004 Justice Goldstone will be a visiting professor for the spring term at New York University Law School and for the fall term at Fordham Law School.
From 1985 to 2000, Justice Goldstone was National President of the National Institute of Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO). From 1991- 1994, he served as Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry regarding Public Violence and Intimidation which came to be known as the Goldstone Commission. He was the Chairperson of the Standing Advisory Committee of Company Law from 1984 to 2004. From August 1994 to September 1996 Justice Goldstone served as the Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He is chairperson of the Bradlow Foundation, a charitable educational trust, and from 1994 to 2003 he was the chairperson of the board of the Human Rights Institute of South Africa (HURISA) and remains a trustee of HURISA. During 1998 he was the chairperson of a high level group of international experts which met in Valencia, Spain, and drafted a Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilities for the Director General of UNESCO (the Valencia Declaration). From August 1999 until December 2001 Justice Goldstone was the chairperson of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo. In December 2001 he was appointed as the co-chairperson of the International Task Force on Terrorism which was established by the International Bar Association. From 1999 to 2003 he served as a member of the International Group of Advisers of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Justice Goldstone is also a member of the Board of Human Rights Watch and a Director of the American Arbitration Association.
His other responsibilities include being the Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, a member of the Board of its School of Law, a Governor of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and President of World ORT (an international technical and technology training organization). Justice Goldstone was a member of the International Panel established in August 1997 by the Government of Argentina to monitor the Argentinean Inquiry to elucidate Nazi activities in the Argentine Republic since 1938.
The many awards Justice Richard Goldstone has received locally and internationally include the International Human Rights Award of the American Bar Association (1994) and Honorary Doctorates of Law from the Universities of Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Natal, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, University of Notre Dame, Maryland University College, Wilfred Laurier in Ontario, the University of Glasgow, the Catholic University of Brabant in Tilburg, the Netherlands, the University of Calgary, Emory University and Princeton University. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple, London, an Honorary Fellow of St Johns College, Cambridge, an Honorary Member of the Association of the Bar of New York, and a Fellow of the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs of Harvard University. He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Justice Goldstone was a member of the faculty of the Salzburg Seminar in 1996, 1998 and co-chaired sessions on International Law in 2001 and 2003. From October to December 2001 he was a visiting professor at the School of Law of the New York University.