Edwin Cameron is a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He was the first senior South African public official to state publically that he was living with HIV, and he has been a powerful critic of his government’s previous AIDS-denialist policies.
Justice Cameron joined the Johannesburg Bar in 1983, and from 1986 practiced as a human rights lawyer at the University of the Witwatersrand's Centre for Applied Legal Studies. He co-drafted the Charter of Rights on AIDS and HIV, co-founded the AIDS Consortium and founded and was the first director of the AIDS Law Project.
In 1994, President Mandela appointed him an Acting Judge of the High Court to chair a Commission into illegal arms deals. He was appointed permanently to the High Court in 1995. From 2000 to 2008, he served as a Supreme Court of Appeal judge, and in 2008 he was appointed to the Constitutional Court.
Justice Cameron has received many awards, among them Honorary Fellowships of Keble College, Oxford and of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies, London; the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights (2000); Stellenbosch University's Alumnus Award (2000), Transnet's HIV/AIDS Champions Award and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation's Excellence in Leadership Award (2003).
In 2002 the Bar of England and Wales honored him with a Special Award for his contribution to international jurisprudence and the protection of human rights.
In 2006, his memoir, Witness to AIDS, was jointly awarded South Africa's most prestigious literary award for non-fiction, the Sunday Times/Alan Paton prize. In 2008, the Middle Temple of London elected him an honorary Bencher.
