Associate Professor Richard Calland
Designation: Director: Democratic Governance & Rights Unit
Biography:
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. His specializes in the law and practice of the right to access to information and whistleblowing 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 Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) – 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 continues to play a role at Idasa as Acting Manager of the Economic Governance Programme that was initiated in January 2007, and serves as part-time Executive Director of ODAC (www.opendemocracy.org.za). He is 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 an BA(Hons) Law from the University of Durham.
Selected Publications:
Anatomy of South Africa: Who Holds the Power? Zebra Press. October 2006.
Prizing Open the Profit Making World in Florini A. (ed). The Right to Know: Transparency for an Open World. Columbia University Press: 2007.
Democracy in the Time of Mbeki: Idasa's Democracy Index. Co-editor (with Paul Graham). IDASA. April 2005.
Whistleblowing Around the World: Law, Culture & Practice. Co-editor (with Guy Dehn). Open Democracy Advice Centre & Public Concern at Work. April 2004.
The Right to Know, The Right to Live: Access to Information & Socio-economic Justice. Co-editor (with Alison Tilley). Open Democracy Advice Centre. October 2002.
Thabo Mbeki's World: The Politics & Ideology of the South African President. Joint Co-editor (with Sean Jacobs). University of Natal Press/Zed Books. September 2002.
Real Politics: The Wicked Issues with Sean Jacobs and Greg Power. British Council: December 2001.
The First Five Years: A Review of South Africa's First Democratic Parliament. Editor. IDASA: September 1999.
The Democracy Index with Robert Mattes in In the Balance? Debating the State of Democracy in South Africa. Paul Graham & Alice Coetze (eds). IDASA. May 2002
Democratic Government: South African Style, 1994-99 in Election \'99, Edited by Andrew Reynolds, David Phillips/James Currey, Cape Town/London: August 1999
State Ethics and Executive Accountability in Pulse: Passages in Democracy-Building: Assessing South Africa's Transition Idasa, August 1998
Tough on Crime and Strong on Human Rights: The Challenge for all of us. With Thabani Masuku. Law, Democracy & Development; UWC. June 2001
Parliament and the socio-economic imperative – what is the role of the national legislature with Mandy Taylor, Law, Democracy & Development, vol. 1, Nov. 1997, Butterworths in association with the Social Law Project & Community Law Centre at the University of Western Cape
All Dressed up with no-where to go? The Rapid Transformation of the South African Parliamentary Committee System in The Changing role of parliamentary committees. Longley, L. & Agh, A. (eds). Wisconsin: Lawrence University. Research Committee of Legislative Specialists, International Political Science Association, and Governance in Southern Africa, occasional paper No. 5, 1997, School of Government, University of Western Cape.
Courses Taught:
Human Rights Law PBL6034S (postgrad: LLM)
Constitutional Law PBL2000W (undergrad)
Current Issues in Constitutional Law 5042F (undergrad)
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