On Wednesday, January 28, Justice Albie Sachs will be speaking at Duke University's Nasher Museum about "JUST ART?: The Place of Art in Rendering Justice." From Duke's announcement of the talk:
Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa will speak about the thinking behind the country's new Constitutional Court building, meant "...to inspire judges and ordinary people alike in our collective pursuit of justice." Justice Sachs's career in human rights activism started at the age of seventeen, when as a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. He started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar aged 21. The bulk of his work involved defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws. Many faced the death sentence. He himself was raided by the security police, subjected to banning orders restricting his movement and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial for two prolonged spells of detention. In 1966 he went into exile. After spending eleven years studying and teaching law in England he worked for a further eleven years in Mozambique as law professor and legal researcher. In 1988 he was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Maputo by South African security agents, losing an arm and the sight of an eye. During the 1980s working closely with Oliver Tambo, leader of the ANC in exile, he helped draft the organization's Code of Conduct, as well as its statutes. After recovering from the bomb he devoted himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic Constitution for South Africa. In 1990 he returned home and as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the ANC took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional democracy. After the first democratic election in 1994 he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court. In addition to his work on the Court, he has traveled to many countries sharing South African experience in healing divided societies. He has also been engaged in the sphere of art and architecture, and played an active role in the development of the Constitutional Court building and its art collection on the site of the Old Fort Prison in Johannesburg.
The card announcing the lecture adds this, which I cannot find anywhere on the net (I've added a link to a Guardian story on the courthouse and a link to the Constitutional Court's website on it art collection):
[Sachs] has also led the court in building an unusual courthouse and filling it with art. Why? In this talk we will explore why a Justice would see it as the province of his office to attend to "how the law talks to and with people" in many registers. What lies behind this unconventional, multilayers, and high-stakes approach to rendering justice?
The Court's building is built on the site of the Old Fort Prison in Johannesburg. The site has a lot of significance, obviously--and all the more so because it's being converted to the cause of law. Yet another manifestation of monument law!
This promises to be absolutely fabulous.
The image is the cover of Bronwyn Law-Viljoen's book Art and Justice: The Art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Update: And, indeed, the talk was fabulous. Of all the talks I've attended since starting in college lo those many years ago, this was one of the, perhaps the, most moving I have ever seen. It began with a short video of Justice Sachs touring the courthouse--pointing out the ways the architects tried to make it different from the usual courthouse: the use of light (in the central atrium there are skylights, for instance), in the courtroom there are windows--but you can only see the feet and legs of pedestrians outside and so the people are rather anonymous; the justices sit at eye level with advocates.
What for me is most significant is the incorporation of part of the old prison into the-courthouse. Building a place of justice on the site of a place of injustice is a great way to remake the world, of course. And as Justice Sachs pointed out, there are people in Johannesburg who know nothing about the courthouse, but who remember the prison and its location. So the site is significant in the public's memory. There is the opportunity to transfer the rough and heightened feelings about the prison over to a new cause. But this courthouse has gone even farther; the builders left part of the old prison (which at one time housed Gandhi and at another Mandela) has incorporated part of the steps of the old prison into the courthouse. So at the courthouse walk the exact same steps that once brought people in for processing.
This has me thinking, as I have been increasingly for the last few months, about what to do with monuments to the era of slavery and Confederacy. And on that I hope to have a few more thoughts in the near future.
In fact, I now see through the medium of Jinny Cho's charming article on Justice Sachs' talk in the Duke Chroncile, that my dean, Jack Boger, is thinking along similar lines for our new law school building. That is, how might a building represent the advance of justice in our country and region?.... Perhaps with a statue of Thomas Ruffin, but that most unexpected case, is for another time.
Al Brophy
Comments