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Arthur Chaskalson was appointed by President Mandela in June 1994 to be the first President of South Africa's new Constitutional Court and was the Chief Justice of South Africa from November 2001 until his retirement on 31 May 2005. In December 2002 he received the award of Supreme Counsellor of the Baobab [gold], a national honour, for his service to the nation in respect of constitutionalism, human rights and democracy. In 2004 he was the co-recipient with Mr. Justice Langa of the Gruber Justice Prize, and in 2007 he was the co-recipient with Ms Wangari Maathai of the 2007 Nelson Mandela Award for Human Rights and Health.
He is the President of the International Commission of Jurists, was the Chairperson of a committee of senior judges appointed by the United Nations Environmental Programme to promote and develop judicial education on environmental law in all parts of the world, was the first chairperson of the Southern African Judges Commission, an association of the Chief Justices of Southern Africa, and chairs the Eminent Jurists Panel appointed by the International Commission of Jurists to enquire into the impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism on the rule of law, human rights law, and where relevant, international humanitarian law.
Justice Chaskalson was Chairman of the Johannesburg Bar in 1976 and again in 1982, a member and later Convenor of the National Bar Examination Board (1979-1991), and the Vice Chairman of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa (1982-1987). . He was elected as an honorary member of the Bar Association of the City of New York in 1985 of the Boston Bar Association in 1991 and of the Johannesburg Bar in 2002. In 1978 he helped establish the Legal Resources Centre, a non-profit organisation, which sought to use law to pursue justice and human rights in South Africa, and was its director from November 1978 until September 1993. During that period he was leading counsel in several cases in which challenges were launched by the Legal Resources Centre against the implementation of apartheid laws. He also appeared as counsel on behalf of members of the liberation movements in several major political trials between 1960 and 1994, including the Rivonia Trial in 1963/1964 at which Mr. Nelson Mandela and other leaders of the African National Congress were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
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