UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN CHAIR IN CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNANCE

  
The proposal for a ‘Chair in Constitutional Governance’ was the initiative of the Chairman in discussion with Prof Hugh Corder, then Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Cape Town in 2008. This was a period of heightened drama and tension in legal circles, but also more widely in society as the events surrounding Judge President Hlophe, the Constitutional Court and the Zuma trials began to play themselves out.

In its motivation for a ‘Chair in Constitutional Governance’, UCT’s Law Faculty argued that the new battle-ground within the constitutional law field will concentrate less on the human-rights area and more on the relationships between the institutions and levels of government and their accountability to the public through their constitutional obligations.

Prof Pierre de Vos was appointed the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance in 2009. He has a B Comm (Law), LLB and LLM (cum laude) from the University of Stellenbosch, an LLM from Columbia University in New York, and an LLD from the University of Western Cape. He taught at the University of Western Cape from 1993 to June 2009.

The Claude Leon Foundation has agreed to fund the establishment of this Chair for five years (2009-2014). Thereafter, the faculty has undertaken to continue the funding of the Chair through the general operating budget as a permanent fixture of its academic offerings.