MEDIA CONTACT: Pat Vaughan Tremmel at (847) 491-4892 or at p-tremmel@northwestern.edu

March 28, 2002

South African Justice Sachs Speaks at Law School

CHICAGO --- The Honorable Albert (Albie) Louis Sachs, a former freedom fighter who now serves as a Constitutional Court of South Africa justice, will deliver a lecture on "The Rights of the Child -- A View from the Constitutional Court of South Africa."

The speech will be delivered April 23 at 5:30 p.m. in the Arthur Rubloff building at Northwestern University School of Law (Room 140), 375 E. Chicago Ave.

Sachs, whose extraordinary journey has taken him to the highest court of the land, is speaking as part of the ongoing commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Children and Family Justice Center, which is part of the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University School of Law.

"We are pleased that Justice Sachs is once again speaking at Northwestern, this time focusing on children’s rights -- an issue that is central to our Children and Family Justice Center, " said Bernardine Dohrn, director of the Children and Family Justice Center.

An exiled freedom fighter who lost an arm and sight in one eye during a car bomb attack in 1988, Sachs is now interpreting the constitution he helped to develop for his country.

His recovery from the car bomb greatly shaped his journey to the Constitutional Court of South Africa and is captured in an autobiographical book "The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter," which was dramatized and performed by the BBC.

He is the author of many books on human rights and has written extensively on culture, gender rights and the environment. His book "The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs" also was dramatized and performed by the BBC.

In 1989, Sachs became the founding director of the South Africa Constitution Studies Center, based at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London; and in 1992 when the center moved to the University of the Western Cape, he was named Professor Extraordinary. He also was appointed Honorary Professor in the Law Faculty at the University of Cape Town.