The College is deeply saddened to report the death of its Honorary Fellow, Justice Lourens Ackermann on 25 May 2024.

Lourens “Laurie” Ackermann (1954, Law) was born in Pretoria and attended Stellenbosch University before coming up to Oxford as the Cape Rhodes Scholar. He returned to South Africa, gaining silk status in 1975, and served as a judge in the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court before resigning in 1987 in opposition to apartheid legislation

After leaving the bench, he became the inaugural Harry Oppenheimer Chair in Human Rights Law at Stellenbosch University. Following the end of apartheid in 1994, Ackermann was one of five judges appointed by Nelson Mandela to the inaugural bench of the newly established Constitutional Court of South Africa. He played a crucial role in the development of the court’s jurisprudence and wrote notable judgements which set the precedent for the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Ackermann’s life-long focus on human dignity as a constitutional value was fundamental to judicial career.

Ackermann retired from the bench in 2004 and founded a research institute at the University of Johannesburg. He published Human Dignity: Lodestar for Equality in South Africa in 2012, expounding theoretical and constitutional background to the relationship between dignity, equality and non-discrimination.

Our thoughts are with Laurie’s wife Denise and their children at this sad time.

Image: Constitutional Court of South Africa by Xevi V (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)