Richard Calland

Richard Calland is Associate Professor in the Public Law Department at the University of Cape Town. He teaches constitutional and human rights law, and some administrative law. He specializes in the law and practice of the right to access of information and whistle-blowing protection; in administrative justice; in public ethics; and in constitutional design – largely derived from his work as programme manager of the Political Information & Monitoring Service at Idasa (www.idasa.org.za) – the leading democracy think tank in Africa – which he led from its inception in 1995 until 2003. In 2000, he founded the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), a law centre based in Cape Town, which promotes the ‘right to know’, advising whistleblowers, advocating law reform and taking test case litigation on access to information. He is the Director of the Economic Governance Programme at Idasa that was initiated in January 2007, and is the founding member of ODAC (www.opendemocracy.org.za) and still serves on the board. He is also a member of the Transparency Task team of the Institute for Public Dialogue at Columbia University, which is led by Professor Joseph Stiglitz. Professor Calland has in recent years served as an expert consultant to the Carter Center, the foundation led by former US President Jimmy Carter, advising on various transparency projects in Bolivia, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Peru and Mali. In South Africa, Calland writes a fortnightly political column for the Mail and Guardian newspaper, ‘Contretemps’, and is a regular commentator in the media. In 2005, he spent two terms at Cambridge University, as a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. In 2006, he spent a month as a visiting lecturer in constitutional law at the law department of Meiji University, Tokyo. Before coming to South Africa in 1994, Calland practiced law at the London Bar (called in 1987 at Lincoln’s Inn). He holds an LLM from the University of Cape Town, a Diploma in World Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA (Hons) Law from the University of Durham.