Albie Sachs

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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.

In 1991 he won the Alan Paton Award for his book Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter. The book cronicles his response to his 1988 car bombing by Apartheid government agents in Maputo, Mozambique, in which he lost most of his right arm and the sight of one eye. He is also the author of Justice in South Africa (1974), The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1976), 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.

[edit] External links

• Biography at the Constitutional Court of South Africa website
• An interview with Albie Sachs by the Conversations with History program of the Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley