Sandile Ngcobo (born 1 March 1953) is former justice in the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. He served as Chief Justice from 2009 to 2011. In 2017, the Southern African Public Law journal published a special issue in volume 32 of the journal under the title: "Twenty-First Century Constitutional Jurisprudence of South Africa: the Contribution of Former Chief Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo" in which academics, judges and practitioners examined Justice Ngcobo's jurisprudence during his tenure at the bench. The special issue was edited by Professor Ntombizozuko Dyani-Mhango, a former clerk of the Justice Ngcobo. See,

Education

Justice Ngcobo received a Fulbright scholarship and he holds an LLM degree from Harvard Law School, where he is a visiting professor of law. He is also a visiting professor of law at

Columbia Law School Columbia Law School (Columbia Law or CLS) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. Columbia Law is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world and has always ranked i ...

and an adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School.

Career

From 1986 to 1987, Ngcobo clerked for A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., a

United States federal judge In the United States, federal judges are judges who serve on courts established under Article Three of the U.S. Constitution. They include the chief justice and the associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, the circuit judges of the U.S. ...

. Ngcobo was made an honorary professor of law by the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

. He was appointed to the Constitutional Court in 1999 by Nelson Mandela. Prior to this he was a judge in the Cape High Court and the Labour Appeal Court. On 6 August 2009, President Jacob Zuma nominated Ngcobo to succeed Pius Langa as

Chief Justice of South Africa The Chief Justice of South Africa is the most senior judge of the Constitutional Court and head of the judiciary of South Africa, who exercises final authority over the functioning and management of all the courts. The position of Chief Justice ...

in October 2009.

References

1953 births Living people University of Natal alumni Harvard Law School alumni Judges of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Chief justices of South Africa People from Durban 20th-century South African judges 21st-century South African judges {{SouthAfrica-law-bio-stub