Beginning his speech against the fading background music of South Africa's Constitutional Court choir, South African Supreme Court Justice Albie Sachs recalled hearing the dulcet tones years ago as a welcome into South Africa's court family.
Sachs spoke to a packed auditorium of more than 200 people at the Nasher Museum of Art Wednesday about the overlap of art and justice, and their infusion into the construction of a unique Constitutional Courthouse in South Africa.
Sachs described the building as saturated with art, which speaks to the embattled history of the land-an integral part of its existence.
"All these parts go together-the singing, physical structures of the building [and] the location," he said. "The Constitutional Court is about turning negative energy, division and strife into positivity. [The history] is a part of us."
Sachs is considered one of South Africa's most passionate human rights advocates. Despite being jailed twice by the Apartheid government of South Africa, being forced into exile and losing one arm and the sight of one eye, Sachs survived to help shape the country's constitution and serve as a justice on the newly developed Constitutional Court.
During the construction of the courthouse, Sachs said he focused on light, volume and space, and attempted to create a design connected to the core purpose of justice.
"What the building establishes is that art requires rationality and law requires emotion," he said.
Sachs added that a constitutional court should be warm because it is the place where basic human rights are defended.
Although most South African courthouses seem isolated from the bustle of the town, the new Constitutional Courthouse is incorporated into the neighborhood, Sachs said.
"[The Courthouse] is on the way to something," he said. "It's an oasis in a sense, rather than an endpoint to some kind of journey."
Catherine Admay, a visiting professor of public policy teaching a course titled "The Arts and Human Rights," introduced Sachs and said she hoped his ideas would stimulate interesting dialogue at Duke.
"In our world-here at Duke, in Durham, in the U.S., wherever our lives take us-how might this sort thinking apply? What do we want to have show for our lives and our work?" she wrote in an e-mail after the event. "If we wanted to be part of transformational change, what would we-what would I-need to do?"
Some Duke students, however, said they feel some of Sach's ideas have already been manifested at Duke.
Sophomore Brian Clement, who is currently in Admay's course, said he thought the nature of the class is evidence that the ideas are present on campus.
Jack Boger, Trinity '68 and dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, said in an interview with The Chronicle after the event that Sachs's infusion of historical strife into the making of the building resonates with his vision of the new law school soon to be constructed at UNC.
Just as Sachs helped form the building in light of the country's battled history, Boger said he believes the new site of UNC's law school can embody the progress of the American South.
"There is nothing there now," he said of the campus location. "[But] we will envision, design and build."
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