Professor Ziyad Motala is a Professor of law at Howard University School of Law. He served as an Honorary Professor of Law at the University Of Western Cape School Of Law in South Africa. Prior to his teaching at Howard, he also taught at Northwestern Law School as an adjunct law professor and a visiting professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Motala is a native of Durban, South Africa, and was active in the struggle for liberation in South Africa. He received his B.A. and LL.B. degrees from the University of Natal (South Africa). He has an LL.M. and an SJ.D degree from Northwestern University in Chicago. He is an authority on international law, constitutional law, and comparative law. He served for eight years as the Director of the Graduate Studies Program at Howard University School of Law and currently serves as the Director of the Howard South Africa Summer Abroad Program, which he initiated. He has delivered papers and keynote speeches at numerous conferences all over the world. He served as the coordinator of a one week seminar on the Protection of Human Rights in Africa conducted by the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences Conference in Conjunction with the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Bureau, and the United Nations Center for Human Rights. He has written extensively in his areas of interest. Motala is the co-author of Constitutional Law Analysis and Cases with Cyril Ramaphosa the current President of the Republic of South Africa and former Chairman of the Constitutional Assembly of South Africa. He has also authored Constitutional Options For a Democratic South Africa: a Comparative Perspective. He has co-edited, The Protection of Human Rights in African Criminal Proceedings with M.C. Bassiouni. He also produced the following casebooks Constitutional Law Cases: The Structure of Government and more recently Constitutional Law Cases: Equal Protection and Fundamental Rights. He is the author of over seventy law review/journal, op-ed pieces or books. He is actively involved in projects pertaining to legal reform and administration of justice in various parts of the world.
