The first of a series of lectures devoted to the memory Marek Nowicki, the late president of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, was held on Saturday, /November 28th/ at Warsaw University. The lecture was delivered by Professor Arthur Chaskalson, the Chief Justice of the High Court of the Republic of South Africa.

The series of lectures is a joint initiative of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Open Society Institute from Budapest. The outstanding lawyer, Professor Chaskalson, who has for years been involved in the human rights movement in South Africa, was invited for the inaugural lecture entitled “Social and Economic Rights during the political transformation in the RSA”. Professor Chaskalson was a defender during the political court trails of liberation movement activists /he defended i.e. Nelson Mandela/. In 1994 he became the first chief justice of the new South African Constitutional Tribunal. He is the chairman of the International Commission of Jurists, and he was also a judge of the ad hoc Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Since 2001 he holds the post of the Chief Justice of the High Court of the Republic of South Africa.