Contributors

Raymond Louw is Chairperson of the Freedom of Expression Institute. He is a former editor of Rand Daily Mail and a former Chairperson of the Campaign for Independent Broadcasting and the Campaign for Open Media. He was also a commissioner of the Independent Media Commission, set up to ensure the impartiality of the broadcast media in the run up to South Africa's first democratic elections. Presently, he is editor of the Southern Africa Report.

Ursula Owen

Ursula Owen was a founder director of Virago Press, the highly successful feminist publishing house founded in 1973. She remains a director of the company, but in 1990 was invited to become Cultural Policy Advisor for the Labour Party, up to the 1992 election. In 1993 she became Editor and Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, a magazine committed to free speech founded in 1972 by Stephen Spender and others.

Joanne Fedler

Joanne Fedler is a lecturer in Law at the University of the Witwatersrand and a women’s rights advocate. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (LLB) from the University of the Witwatersrand and an LLM from Yale University and is the recipient of numerous prizes, including a Fulbright Scholarship. She teaches and writes in the area of criminal law, family law and gender and the law, working closely with organisations concerned with women’s rights. Ms Fedler is a legal adviser for People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) and an educationist on battery, pornography and abuse. She has been involved in training the South African Police Serviced on issues relating to women’s rights and recently acted as a consultant to the Ford Foundation on setting up a legal advocacy clinic for abused women in South Africa.

Prof Frederick Schauer

Frederick Schauer is Frank Stanton Professor of the first Amendment, John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The holder of Bachelor of Arts and MBA degrees from Dartmouth College and a JD from Harvard University, he was a trial lawyer for two years before embarking on an academic career in 1972. He teaches and writes primarily in the areas of constitutional law, freedom of speech and press, the philosophy of law and legal constraints on policy making and is the author of a number of books.

Advocate Gilbert Marcus

An advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa, Adv. Marcus has practised and written extensively in the field of freedom of expression. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts ( LLB) from Wits and an LLM from Canterbury, and is a former Associate Professor of Law at the centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Prof Shadrack Gutto

Shadrack Gutto is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits. He graduated with a Bachelor of Law (Hons) from the University of Nairobi, Kenya in 1975 and was awarded his PhD in the Sociology of Law by Lund University, Sweden. Prof Gutto lectured for a number of years at Lund University, and before that at the Universities of Zimbabwe and Nairobi. He currently teaches, writes and researches in the areas of jurisprudence, constitutional property and human rights law. Prof Gutto is currently an executive member of the Wits Black Staff Forum and a member of the Wits University Advisory Committee on Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunities.

Justice John Sopinka

Judge Sopinka was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988, having practised at the bar for 28 years and being appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1975. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts (LLB) and was awarded a Doctor luris Honoris Causa from the Ukranian free University, Munich, Germany in 1990. He has lectured in law, and is the author of numerous articles and three books, and has acted in a number of Commissions of Enquiry. Judge Sopinka is a founding director of the Oakville Chapter of the Canadian Save the Children fund and the Kelso Music Centre.

Floyd Abrams

Floyd Abrams is a partner in the New York law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel and has argued more cases before the Supreme Court involving issues relating to freedom of the press than any lawyer in American history. He was co-counsel to The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case and has argued in the Supreme Court in a large number of its most significant First Amendment cases. He is currently the Chairman of Communications Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and is a Visiting Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Mr Abrams graduated from Cornell University in 1956 and the Yale Law School in 1960.

Prof Kobus van Rooyen

Prof van Rooyen served on the Publications Appeal Board from 1975 to 1990, and was its Chairman for ten years. He is currently the Chair of the Task Group appointed by the Minister of Home Affairs to rewrite the Publications Act in the light of the fundamental rights chapter of the Constitution. Prof van Rooyen is Head of the Department of Criminal Law at the University of Pretoria, having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (LLB LLD) there. He was appointed Senior Counsel in 1990 and is the Chair of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa and the Press Council of South Africa.