Arthur Chaskalson SCOB, was President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2001 and Chief Justice of South Africa from 2001 to 2005. Chaskalson was a member of the defence team in the Rivonia Trial of 1963.
The Chief Justice of South Africa is the most senior judge of the Constitutional Court and head of the judiciary of South Africa, who exercises final authority over the functioning and management of all the courts.
Ismail Mahomed SCOB SC was a South African lawyer and jurist who served as the first black Chief Justice of South Africa from January 1997 until his death in June 2000. He was also the Chief Justice of Namibia from 1992 to 1999 and the inaugural Deputy President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1995 to 1996.
The courts of South Africa are the civil and criminal courts responsible for the administration of justice in South Africa. They apply the law of South Africa and are established under the Constitution of South Africa or under Acts of the Parliament of South Africa.
Sir Sydney Woolf Kentridge SCOB is a South African-born lawyer, judge and member of the Bar of England and Wales. He practised law in South Africa and the United Kingdom from the 1940s until his retirement in 2013. In South Africa he played a leading role in a number of the most significant political trials in the apartheid-era, including the Treason Trial of Nelson Mandela and the 1978 inquest into the death of Steve Biko. Kentridge's wife, Felicia Kentridge, was also a leading anti-apartheid lawyer.
Tholakele Hope "Tholie" Madala was a judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa between October 1994 and October 2008. He was appointed to the court by Nelson Mandela upon the court's inception. Before that, he practised as a human rights lawyer in the Transkei, taking silk in 1993, and served briefly in the Mthatha Supreme Court in 1994. He retired from the bench in 2008.
Catherine "Kate" O'Regan is a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. From 2013 to 2014 she was a commissioner of the Khayelitsha Commission and is now the inaugural director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford.
Thembile Lewis Skweyiya was a South African lawyer and judge who served on the Constitutional Court of South Africa between February 2004 and May 2014. He rose to prominence as a civil rights lawyer during apartheid and he served three years in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court before his elevation to the Constitutional Court.
Professor Barend van Niekerk was a South African acclaimed jurist, a campaigning legal academic and a prominent human rights and anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1970s and early 1980s. This "maverick law professor" was prosecuted twice by the South African state prosecutor and privately sued once, all such actions being based on his supposed contempt of court. He was indeed a fearless critic of the apartheid legal system, in particular of the judiciary's racial bias in setting death penalties, but also of imprisonment, torture and solitary confinement; freedom of speech; and the role of the judiciary.
John Mowbray Didcott (1931–1998) was a South African lawyer, judge and a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from the court's opening on 14 February 1995 until his death. Didcott was known for his firm support of human rights during 23 years on the bench in and after the apartheid era.
Lex Mpati is a South African retired judge who was the President of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa from August 2008 to May 2016. He was appointed to the bench in February 1997 as a judge of the Eastern Cape Division and he joined the Supreme Court as a puisne judge in December 2000. Before his elevation to the presidency, he was the Supreme Court's first Deputy President from 2003 to 2008. He was also an acting judge in the Constitutional Court in 2007.
Felicia, Lady Kentridge was a South African lawyer and anti-apartheid activist who co-founded the South African Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in 1979. The LRC represented black South Africans against the apartheid state and overturned numerous discriminatory laws; Kentridge was involved in some of the Centre's landmark legal cases. Kentridge and her husband, the prominent lawyer Sydney Kentridge, remained involved with the LRC after the end of apartheid, though they moved permanently to England in the 1980s. In her later years, Kentridge took up painting, and her son William Kentridge became a famous artist.
Nonkosi Zoliswa Mhlantla is a South African judge of the Constitutional Court. Elevated to that court in December 2015, she was formerly a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal between December 2008 and November 2015. She entered legal practice as an attorney in her hometown, Port Elizabeth, and joined the bench in June 2002, becoming the first woman ever to be appointed to the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa.
Leona Valerie Theron is a judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Before her elevation in July 2017, she served in the Supreme Court of Appeal between December 2010 and June 2017. She is the first Coloured judge to serve in the Constitutional Court.
Tembeka Nicholas Ngcukaitobi is a South African lawyer and legal scholar. An advocate of the Johannesburg Bar since August 2010, he gained silk status in February 2020. He is currently a member of the Judicial Service Commission and a part-time member of the Competition Commission's Competition Tribunal.
Caroline Elizabeth Heaton Nicholls is a South African judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal. Formerly a human rights lawyer, she was a judge of the Johannesburg High Court from September 2009 until June 2019, when she was appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
Geoffrey Budlender is a South African lawyer known for his involvement in public interest litigation. He co-founded the Legal Resources Centre, where he worked as an attorney until he was admitted as an advocate in 2005. He is currently a part-time member of the Competition Commission's Competition Tribunal.
Trevor Richard Gorven is a South African judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal. Before his elevation to that court, he served in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court from December 2008 to June 2021. He was formerly an advocate in Pietermaritzburg, primarily practising civil litigation, and he received silk status in 2006.
Kevin Gerard Beecroft Swain is a South African retired judge who served in the Supreme Court of Appeal from 2014 to 2020. He was formerly a judge of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court from 2003 to 2014. Before joining the bench in November 2003, he was an advocate and Senior Counsel in Pietermaritzburg.
Jeremy John Gauntlett SC KC is a British–South African lawyer who practises public and commercial law. He entered legal practice as an advocate in Cape Town in 1976 and was admitted to the Bar of England and Wales in 1994. In addition to his chambers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, he is a tenant at Brick Court Chambers in London.
