Arthur Chaskalson, a judge and human rights lawyer, was born on November 24, 1931 in Johannesburg.
He was the first chief justice of democratic South Africa, the first president of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, president of the International Commission of Jurists and chairman of a committee of senior judges appointed by the United Nations Environmental Programme to promote and develop judicial education on environmental law in all parts of the world.
Chaskalson in 1952 he graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a B.Com, and in 1954 he obtained his LLB Cum Laude.
Two years later he was admitted to the Johannesburg Bar.
Chaskalson acted as defense counsel in a number of political trials during the apartheid era.
One case was the Rivonia trial in 1963 to 1964 in which former President Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.
As founding member and director of an organisation that sought to pursue justice and human rights in South Africa, the Legal Resources Centre, he challenged the implementation of several apartheid laws.
Chaskalson was the director of this centre from its inception in 1978 until 1993.
He also worked on a new constitution for Namibia, which achieved independence from Pretoria in 1989.
During the constitutional negotiations between the apartheid government and the ANC that led to the first democratic government elections in 1994.
He was he a member of the Technical Committee on Constitutional Issues in South Africa and a consultant to the Multiparty Negotiating Forum.
In June 1994, he became the first president of South Africa’s newly founded Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa where constitutional matters are considered.
On November 22, 2001 he became the Chief Justice of South Africa until his retirement in 2005.
Chaskalson died of leukaemia, aged 81, in Johannesburg on Saturday, December 1, 2012.
