Etienne Mureinik

Etienne Mureinik (January 1954 – 10 July 1996) was a South African lawyer and legal scholar. He was an expert on administrative law and constitutional law. A professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, he was formerly the dean of the university's law school from 1991 to 1992.

Life and education Mureinik was born in January 1954 and matriculated at King David High School in Linksfield, Johannesburg in 1970. He was the Southern Transvaal school chess champion in the in 1969.

Constitutional negotiations As an expert on constitutional law, Mureinik was centrally involved in public debate during the negotiations to end apartheid. Though he did not belong to any political party, he advised the Democratic Party on the negotiations that led to the adoption of the Interim Constitution of 1993 and the final Constitution of 1996.

Scholarship Mureinik's most notable work was a 1994 article in the South African Journal on Human Rights, in which he introduced the concept of a "culture of justification" as the foundation of post-apartheid democracy and rule of law. It was highly influential in South African constitutional law. It was also quoted by Justice Laurie Ackermann in S v Makwanyane, one of the Constitutional Court's earliest judgments.

Personal life and death Mureinik's father was the editor of a South African Jewish newspaper, and his siblings lived in Israel. In 1981 in Oxford, he married Amanda Reichman, a fellow student whom he had known at Wits and who went on to become an advocate.

He had clinical depression and died by suicide on 10 July 1996, jumping from a window in a hotel in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. The Constitutional Court observed a minute's silence in his honour.