What you can do with rights

E. Cameron

This is the text of a lecture given by Justice Edwin Cameron of the Constitutional Court of South Africa titled "What you can do with rights". He examines South Africa's experience over the 18 years since the end of apartheid and the creation of democracy of constitutionalism and the rule of law, and of rights-talk. He will explore the country's constitutional achievements amid scepticism about rights, and ask: what can law and legal rights do in securing for people the benefits a decent society should promise? Cameron was a powerful critic of President Mbeki's AIDS-denialist policies and gives here a summary about this AIDS disaster.