Albert Louis Sachs was born in Johannesburg on January 30, 1935. After earning degrees in Philosophy, Arts, and Law, he began his professional career in his early 20s as a defence attorney. His work was primarily centred on human rights and the eradication of racial segregation.

This election could not go by unnoticed in the South Africa of apartheid, and Sachs was detained by the Security Police and isolated without a trial. In 1996, he exiled himself to work as a professor in England and then in Mozambique. It was in this country where he would lose an arm and his vision in one eye after the explosion of a bomb placed in his vehicle by South African security forces. This was 1988.

Of his background, his participation in preparing a new democratic Constitution for South Africa as a member of the African National Congress´ Constitutional Committee stands out, as well as his role as the National Executive of that organisation, actively forming part of South Africa´s transformation into a constitutional democracy.

After the first democratic elections in 1994, he was appointed as a member of the recently created Constitutional Court by President Nelson Mandela. In the field of Law, his three Honorary Doctorates stand out, as well as belonging to UNESCO´s International Committee of Bioethics, his collaboration in preparing the International Declaration on Human Genomes, and founding the South Africa Constitution Studies Centre, which is headquartered in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London.

His books include The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1966), adapted to the theatre by the Royal Shakespeare Company and broadcast by the BBC; The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter (1991), about his life after the assassination attempt and being appointed by Mandela to a position in the Constitutional Court; and The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law  (2009).

Sources:

• Memoria Abierta webpage

• Constitutional Court of South Africa webpage