He rose to prominence representing anti-apartheid activists in public law matters and criminal political trials.
[1] Yacoob served his pupillage in Durban and was admitted as an advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa on 12 March 1973.
[2] Four years later, in February 1998,[1] President Nelson Mandela appointed him to the court after the University of Natal nominated him for a new vacancy.
[2] He served a full 15-year term on the bench, including a stint as acting Deputy Chief Justice in 2012 while Dikgang Moseneke was on leave.
[8] His most important contribution to the court's jurisprudence was his majority judgement in Government v Grootboom, a landmark 2000 case which established the justiciability of socioeconomic rights.
In 2014, he led an independent "fact-finding" inquiry into allegations of serious misconduct at the National Prosecuting Authority, publishing damning findings against prosecutors Nomgcobo Jiba and Lawrence Mrwebi.
[14][15] The following year, he was the head of a Hague-based panel of international judges who conducted the International People's Tribunal on the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia,[16] and in 2018, he chaired South Africa's People Tribunal on Economic Crimes, which was mandated to probe apartheid-era economic crimes as well as the post-apartheid Arms Deal and state capture.
[1][9] Their daughter, Seena Yacoob, is an advocate and High Court judge,[21] and their son is a scientist at the Large Hadron Collider.