Justice Kate O’Regan To Discuss South Africa’s Constitutional Court at Sept. 13 Newman Lecture

The Honorable Kate O’Regan, former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, will deliver the 2012-2013 Judge Jon O. Newman Lecture on Global Justice on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, at Yale Law School. The lecture, titled “A Forum for Reason: Reflections on the Role and Work of South Africa’s Constitutional Court,” is open to the Yale Law School community and invited guests. It begins at noon in Room 127, and lunch will be provided. RSVPs are required. Those planning to attend should respond to Marianne.dietz@yale.edu by Sept. 6, 2012.

Kate O’Regan was appointed by Nelson Mandela in 1994 as a judge of the newly established Constitutional Court of South Africa. She served the maximum term of office of 15 years before retiring in 2009. She is currently president of the International Monetary Fund Administrative Tribunal, a member of the Sanctions Board of the World Bank, and an ad hoc judge of the Namibian Supreme Court. From 2008-2012, she served as the inaugural chairperson of the United Nations Internal Justice Council.

Since 1997, she has been an honorary consulting editor of the South African Law Reports and serves on the editorial board of many South African legal publications. Since 2005, she has been closely involved with the establishment of the South African Legal Information Institute, a web-based law reporting system that reports judgments from fifteen southern and eastern African jurisdictions that is based on the principle of free access to law. She also serves in different capacities on the boards of several non-governmental organizations in the field of human rights, constitutionalism and the rule of law.

She is an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town, a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, and was a Hauser Global Visiting Professor at New York University.

She holds a B.A. and LL.B. from the University of Cape Town, an LL.M. from the University of Sydney, and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The Judge Jon O. Newman Lecture is an annual lecture in global justice, or public international, human rights, or comparative law, by a distinguished individual who is not a citizen of, and does not reside in, the United States.