Gilbert Marcus
Gilbert Marcus SC (Sidney Sussex, 1980) is a senior lawyer and advocate at the Johannesburg Bar, and an ally of the LGBT+ movement.
He has argued a number of cases which have advanced LGBT+ rights in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent.
Under South African apartheid, Gilbert spent 8 years practising public interest law at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies. He did extensive work fighting political censorship and defending anti-apartheid activists charged with offences against state security, including treason. With the advent of constitutional democracy, Gilbert has been involved in many of the major cases in the South African Constitutional Court.
These include a successful challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty; the striking-down of laws that criminalised gay sexual relations; compelling the government to provide anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant mothers living with HIV and striking-down the laws which prohibited the formation of trade unions in the Defence Force.
He has appeared in the Constitutional Court in approximately 100 cases. In the field of administrative law, he has argued the leading case in the Constitutional Court concerning the review of public procurement decisions and has argued many cases challenging regulatory approvals or disapprovals in diverse areas such as mining and telecommunications. He has also appeared in courts in neighbouring territories, including Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland.