Arthur Chaskalson's last public address was just weeks ago. It expressed two qualities he valued so highly in others. The first is a relentless rationality. The second is that law is nothing if it is not underpinned by the moral commitment of those who work it.
Speaking to a packed audience of the Cape Law Society in Kimberley, he spoke out on the Legal Practice Bill. He did so in the tradition that judicial reticence on public issues ends when it comes to the rule of law itself. He said that the structure the Bill proposes opens the door ‘to important aspects being controlled by the executive' and that this was not only in conflict with international legal standards but was ‘inconsistent with an independent legal profession'.
The challenge he issued to all South African lawyers was twofold. Firstly, he called upon the legal profession to do what he called its duty, no less, ‘by raising its voice against measures calculated to erode' its independence. In its present form, on his meticulous analysis, the Bill does exactly that. But he also challenged the profession in another respect. It ‘would have no right to assert the public interest if it were to serve only the elite'. To the last he stood with those who think it law's duty to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted.
Chaskalson graduated B Com LLB cum laude from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1954. He was also an outstanding footballer, playing not only for Wits but for the combined South African universities team. Called to the Johannesburg Bar in May 1956, he took silk in July 1971.
In 1978, in the words of Sydney Kentridge, Chaskalson ‘stepped out of a brilliant practice' to take up the modestly-salaried position of national director of the Legal Resources Centre. In June 1994 he was appointed the first President of the newly-established Constitutional Court, and following the death of Ismail Mahomed in 2001, Chief Justice. He retired from active duty in 2005, but continued to deliver lectures and to advise international institutions concerned with justice both in South Africa and across the world.
Chaskalson's professional life was marked by three stages. First he was the most cerebral of advocates. His manner was formal, even cold - a devastating cross-examiner, clear but soft-spoken in argument. His manner may have dissuaded an easy camaraderie, but he was a natural leader at the Bar. Twice chairman of the Johannesburg Bar, and for five years Vice-Chairman of the General Council of the Bar, he led South Africa's advocates in innumerable confrontations with the Vorster then Botha governments over legislative and executive measures striking at human rights and an independent administration of justice.