JUSTICE EDWIN CAMERON Justice Cameron was born in Pretoria in 1953. He later attended Stellenbosch University on an Anglo-American Open Scholarship, where he obtained a BA Law and an Honours degree in Latin, both cum laude. He is a graduate of Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, where he obtained a BA in Jurisprudence and the BCL with honours. He received his LLB from the University of South Africa, and was awarded a medal for the best law graduate.
He has received a number of awards, including the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights in 2000, the prize for Civil Courage of German Gay and Lesbian Movement in 2007, and the Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple in 2009. Justice Cameron went on to practise as an advocate of the Johannesburg Bar, following which he entered the terrain of human rights law, taking up a position at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, where he was awarded a personal professorship in law. His work focused on labour law, defence of ANC political activists charged with treason, land tenure and forced removals as well as LGBTI equality.
Justice Cameron was also the founder and first director of the Aids Law Project. He was instrumental in ensuring that sexual orientation was expressly included in the equality clause of the Constitution. He has written various scholarly articles and books on the judiciary, conscription, labour law, the law of trusts, AIDS and HIV, and the legal rights of gays and lesbians. He helped draft and negotiate the mining industry’s first comprehensive AIDS agreement with the Chamber of Mines. He also drafted the Charter of Rights on AIDS and HIV, co-founded the AIDS Consortium and was the first director of the AIDS Law Project.
Then President Mandela appointed him as a judge of the High Court. In 2000, he was appointed as a Judge of Appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal and finally as Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa, where he currently presides.