South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Selective Truths and Tentative Reconciliation

Topic: Racial identity, racial reconstruction and the law
Date: Thursday 16 August
Time: 6:00-8:00pm
Venue: Minter Ellison Conference Room, level 13, Sydney University Law School
Entry: $5
Registration: Submit an on-line regstration form, or contact the Institute directly

Penelope Andrews worked at a public interest law firm in Johannesburg before pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University, where she received an LL.M. degree. She spent a brief period at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York before being appointed the Chamberlain Fellow in Legislation at Columbia Law School. Prior to joining the faculty at CUNY, she taught in the areas of anti-discrimination law and policy, and Aborigines and the Law in Melbourne, Australia. She has also visited at the University of Maryland where she taught a comparative South African/American course on Race and the Law. She has written extensively on human rights issues in the South African and Australian contexts, with particular emphasis on the rights of women and black people. She is active in a variety of international human rights and peace organisations, including as vice president of the South African-American Organization. She is a contributing author of the book "The Post-Apartheid Constitutions: Reflections on South Africa's Basic Law" (Ohio University Press and Witwatersrand University Press).

Taunya Lovell Banks is the Jacob A. France Professor of Equality Jurisprudence at the University of Maryland School of Law where she teaches constitutional law, torts, law in popular culture (film or literature), and critical race theory. For the 2001 calendar year she is visiting at Washington College of Law, American University in Washington, D.C. Her research interests span a wide range of socio-legal topics that often explore the interplay of race, gender, class in the creation and application of law and social policy. Her publications include several articles and book chapters on legal and public health issues facing women infected with the HIV virus; an empirical study of gender bias in legal education; a discussion of racial hierarchies within communities of colour; and an essay exploring domestic work as a site of a more global feminist analytical model. Prior to entering legal education in 1976, Professor Banks worked as a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi, litigating voting rights and housing discrimination cases.