[4][5] Sachs excelled in school and was moved forward two grades, in part due to a shortage of schoolteachers in South Africa during World War II.

[7] On 6 April 1952, white South Africans commemorated 300 years since the arrival of Dutch colonisers, particularly Jan van Riebeeck, who rooted European civilization into the country.

More than 2,000 delegates supporting the ANC adopted the Freedom Charter, which envisaged equal rights for all in a future South Africa that "belongs to all that live in it, black and white.

"[9] As part of the opposition, Sachs was subject to predawn raids by the security police and governmental restrictions on his activities, including meeting with more than one person at any given time.

[citation needed] Sachs attended Sussex University with financial aid from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and completed his doctorate in 1970 under Norman Cohn and G. I.

He also published The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs, which illustrated his time in detainment, in 1966 and Stephanie on Trial, which covered Kemp's imprisonment and his second arrest, in 1968.

Sachs moved to the newly independent Mozambique in 1977, where he worked as a law professor at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo and studied Portuguese to fluency.

[17] Sachs helped lay the foundations for the future constitution of South Africa by serving as a scribe and provided Tambo with legal support.

This "soft vengeance" would take the form of getting freedom in a new non-racial and democratic South Africa based on human rights and the rule of law.

[20][5] After recovering from the attack, Sachs established and became the founding director of the South African Constitutional Studies Centre at the University of London.

[16] He worked with UWC to organized workshops on electoral systems, land rights, regional government, and affirmative action, among other topics.

[29] In 1994, following South Africa's first democratic elections, Sachs resigned from the ANC's National Executive Committee and pursued a position on the country's newly established Constitutional Court.

In addition to his judicial duties, Sachs and Justice Yvonne Mokgoro put together the Court's art collection, which relayed its dedication to humanity and social interdependence in the newly democratic South Africa.

Here, Sachs was asked about his role in a report downplaying the ANC's indefinite detention and solitary confinement of Umkhonto we Sizwe commander Thami Zulu.

[34] Sachs received criticism from other politicians and lawyers, which he felt was unfair given his central role in ending torture in ANC camps.

[35][36] Sachs worked on a number of landmark cases, including Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie and the Prisoners' Right to Vote.

[10] After the Electoral Commission of South Africa declared that prisoners would be barred from voting in the general elections, the Court considered whether they were denying a fundamental right.

The Court unanimously agreed that withholding the right to vote from prisoners was unconstitutional and would be observed only under an Act of Parliament that was compatible with the Constitution.

At the same time, the state should, wherever reasonably possible, seek to avoid putting believers to extremely painful and intensely burdensome choices of either being true to their faith or else respectful of the law.

Sachs added, "Ubuntu is a unifying motif of the Bill of Rights, which is nothing if not a structured, institutionalized and operational declaration in our evolving new society of the need for human interdependence, respect and concern.

"[40] Sachs wrote the Court's majority judgement in Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie declaring that South Africa's statute defining marriage to be between one man and one woman was unconstitutional for not including same-sex couples.

"[44][45] Volks v Robinson looked at whether a law providing for surviving spouses to receive maintenance from a deceased person's estate was unconstitutional on the grounds that it did not include unmarried cohabitants.

While the majority of the Court did not find this discriminatory, Sachs strongly disagreed: "[S]hould a person who has shared her home and life with her deceased partner, borne and raised children with him, cared for him in health and in sickness, and dedicated her life to support the family they created together, be treated as a legal stranger to his estate, with no claim for subsistence because they were never married?

Sachs initially planned to dismiss the case but, in talking with his colleagues, he learned that M was a single parent of three teenagers living in an area with high levels of gang and drug activity and violence.

[58] In 2021, he served as a judge at the World Human Rights Moot Court Competition as part of the University of Pretoria's Mandela Day celebration in Geneva.

[100] In Allan Hutchinson's 2012 book Laughing at the Gods: Great Judges and How They Made the Common law, Sachs is listed as one of the greatest common law judges in history alongside Lord Mansfield, John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., James Atkin, Tom Denning, Thurgood Marshall, and Bertha Wilson.

Hutchinson believes that Sachs' "life and career redefine what it means to be a lawyer and judge in a society that is grappling with the injustices of its past and ameliorating opportunities of its future.

[104] She remained in London for another 10 years and worked as a physiotherapist specializing in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy before returning to South Africa.