Justice Cameron

Personal details

Edwin Cameron was born in Pretoria on 15 February 1953.

Education

He completed his schooling at Pretoria Boys’ High School and attended Stellenbosch University on the Anglo-American Open Scholarship, where he obtained a BA Law and an Honours degree in Latin, both cum laude. He lectured in Latin and Classical Studies before studying at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. There he obtained a BA in Jurisprudence and the BCL, with honours and prizes. Cameron received his LLB from the University of South Africa, and received the medal for the best law graduate.

Professional history

Cameron practised at the Johannesburg Bar from 1983 to 1994. From 1986 he was a human rights lawyer based at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), where he was awarded a personal professorship in law. His practice included labour and employment law; defence of ANC fighters charged with treason; conscientious and religious objection; land tenure and forced removals; and gay and lesbian equality. From 1988 he advised the National Union of Mineworkers on AIDS/HIV, and helped draft and negotiate the industry’s first comprehensive AIDS agreement with the Chamber of Mines. While at CALS, he drafted the Charter of Rights on AIDS and HIV, co-founded the AIDS Consortium (a national affiliation of non-governmental organizations working in AIDS), which he chaired for its first three years, and founded and was the first director of the AIDS Law Project. He oversaw the gay and lesbian movement’s submissions to the Kempton Park negotiating process. This, with other work, helped secure the express inclusion of sexual orientation in the South African Constitution. In September 1994, he was awarded silk (senior counsel status). President Mandela appointed him an acting judge and later a judge of the High Court. In 1999/2000 he served for a year as an Acting Justice at the Constitutional Court. In 2000 he was appointed a Judge of Appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal. He was appointed a Justice of the Constitutional Court in 2008.

Other activities

Community-related

Chair of the governing Council of the University of the Witwatersrand from 1998 to 2008
Patron of Guild Cottage Children’s Home, Soweto HIV/AIDS Counsellors’ Association (SOHACA), Ladybrand Hospice, Vuyani Dance Theatre
Co-founder and first chair of Wits Law School Endowment Appeal (1998-2005)
General Secretary, Rhodes Trust in Southern Africa from 2003 to 2014

International

Keynote address at the XII International Conference on HIV/AIDS in Durban, 2000
Edward A Smith Annual Lecture, Harvard University Law School, 2002
President of Bentham Club and Bentham Lecture, University College, London, 2003
Inaugural lecture in law, British Academy, 2004
Lord Chief Justice Taylor Memorial Lecture, Inner Temple, 2008
Visiting Judge, Birkbeck College, London
Honorary Professor, City University, London
Fourth Leslie Scarman Memorial Lecture, January 2012
Keynote address at Columbia University Bio-Ethics Centre, October 2012
Keynote address, Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health & Human Rights and Center for AIDS Research, April 2014
Robert P Anderson Memorial Lecture, Yale Law School, October 2014
High Court of Australia Annual Lecture, Canberra, Australia 2017
O'Byrne Lecture, Calgary, March 2018
Owen Lecture, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, March 2018
Alberico Gentili Lectures, University of Macerata, April 2018
Association American of Law Schools, Keynote Adress, New Orleans, 2019

Honours and awards

Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, 2000
Transnet’s HIV/AIDS Champions Award, 2000
University of Stellenbosch - Alumnus Award, 2000
Special award by the Bar of England and Wales for ‘contribution to international jurisprudence and protection of human rights’, 2002
San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Excellence in Leadership Award, 2003
Honorary Fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies, 2001
Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford, 2003
Honorary Fellow, Keble College, Oxford, 2004
Witness to AIDS’ awarded Sunday Times/Alan Paton Prize (South Africa’s premier literary award for non-fiction), 2006
Prize for Civil Courage of German gay and lesbian movement, 2007
Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple, 2009
Winner of Brudner Prize, Yale University, for gay and lesbian scholarship, 2009
Grand Prix du Conseil Québécois des Gais et Lesbiennes, Montreal, 2011
Paul Harris Fellow, Rotary International
Honorary doctorates in law from King’s College, London (2009), Wits University (2009), Oxford (2011), St Andrews (2012), Stellenbosch (2015) and Sussex (2016)
Justice – A Personal Account (2014) winner of South African Literary Award (SALA) for creative non-fiction, 2015
Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and SCiences, 2016

Cameron has written scholarly articles on the judiciary, conscription, labour and employment law, the law of trusts, AIDS and HIV, the legal rights of gays and lesbians and the legal computation of time. Apart from his memoir, Witness to AIDS (2005), he has also written books on the law of trusts, labour law and gay and lesbian lives in South Africa.

JSC Interviews
JSC interview on the 3 October 1994

Speeches and Lectures

Wits Centre for Ethics, August 2009

Seminar in Honour of Professor Tony Honore, March 2010

The Fourth Scarman Lecture, January 2012

Understanding Human Dignity:Dignity and Disgrace – Moral Citizenship and Constitutional Protection, June 2012

World Bar Conference, London : Advocacy in the highest court: do’s and dont’s in London, Canberra and Johannesburg, June 2012

SASOP ~ internalised stigma ~ 17th NATIONAL CONGRESS OF SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIETY OF PSYCHIATRISTS 7 September 2012

Columbia Bio-Ethics Keynote 18 October 2012

Tribute to Arthur Chaskalson – Sunday Independent 09 December 2012

Tribute to Arthur Chaskalson – Extraordinary Lives – podcast with Judge Lee Bozalek

State House Malawi speech against homophobia and AIDS stigma, Friday 28 June 2013 (transcript) (taken from Ground up)