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Justice Johann van der Westhuizen 1

Justice Johann van der Westhuizen has a long association with the University of Pretoria where he was educated. He was appointed a professor in 1980 and in 1986 became the founding director of the Centre for Human Rights, a position he held until 1998. He joined the Transvaal Provincial Division of the High Court of South Africa in 1999 and was appointed a judge on the Constitutional Court on 1 February 2004. Justice van der Westhuizen was intimately involved in the drafting of South Africa’s final Constitution in 1995 and 1996. He organised several conferences between 1984 and 1994 on human rights and related matters and participated in discussions with the then-banned liberation movements in Dakar, Harare, Lusaka and New York. He has published numerous articles and edited books on legal history, criminal law, jurisprudence and human rights and has lectured and participated in several courses and seminars for new judges and magistrates. Justice van der Westhuizen is an Extraordinary Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria and teaches from time to time in the LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa Programme. He delivered the keynote address at the Graduation Ceremony for the Class of 2002. He has served as a judge in the final round of the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition and has been a Board Member at the Centre for Human Rights for many years.

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