The Dean, Professor Schwikkard welcomed everyone to the sixth Rabinowitz Visitor lecture and took a few moments to sketch the background to the series.

'UCT celebrated 150 years of the teaching of law in South Africa in 2009, and as supporters of the Law 150 campaign, Ben & Shirley Rabinowitz established a Visitorship with the aim of bringing leading lawyers to participate in the intellectual life of the Faculty over a couple of days. Over the past six years the faculty has benefitted enormously from a wide spectrum of speakers that has included a British Judge, the current director of the Bingham Institute, a legal-anthropology duo and a global law and policy specialist.

'Tonight’s speaker is our second from Australia, the other being a labour lawyer.  Each one of them has not only given a public lecture and a lecture to an LLB class but has also been the fulcrum of a workshop that includes the wider academic community. So, it is with much gratitude Bennie that I thank you once again for your and Shirley’s generous and innovative gift that has dovetailed so well with the Faculty’s vision of developing a diverse learning and research environment.'

Martin Chanock is a graduate of Wits and Cambridge and is currently an Emeritus Professor of Law at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Between 1965 and 1977 he taught in Malawi, Nigeria, England and the USA.  His fields of research have been legal colonisation, customary law and globalisation as well as constitutionalism and constitutional law. Among his publications are 'Unconsummated Union: Britain, Rhodesia and South Africa 1900-1945'; 'Law Custom and Social Order; the colonial experience in Malawi and Zambia'; and 'The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902-1936; fear favour and prejudice'.

Martin joined the then School of Legal Studies at La Trobe in 1977 and has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Wellesley, London, and Cape Town; he was the Smuts Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at Cambridge in 2004 and 2005.

People interested in a copy of his paper should write to Pauline.Alexander@uct.ac.za