On turning six, during World War II, ALBIE SACHS received a card from his father expressing the wish that he would grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation. His 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.

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. 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.