Professor David McQuoid-Mason, B Comm (Natal) LLB (Natal) LLM (London) PhD (Natal), is a Professor of Law based at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. He is also:
He began teaching law in 1971. He taught LLB courses in Delict, Succession, Medical Law and aspects of Human Rights Law, Legal Aid and Street Law. He also taught LLM courses in Law and Medical Practice, Consumer Law and aspects of Human Rights Litigation. He still teaches a course on Medical Law and Ethics for medical students.
David specializes in the Law of Privacy, Medical Law, Access to Justice and Legal Education. He is Chairperson of the Institute for Professional Legal Training and Street Law South Africa and Chairperson and Acting Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
David established the first law clinic at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 1973, and the first Street Law programme in South Africa in 1986. He has conducted clinical legal education training programmes for law teachers and clinicians in South Africa, West Africa and East Africa. David has taught in continuing legal education courses for the legal profession (attorneys, advocates, judges and academics) throughout South Africa, and in Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Namibia. He has been a member of the International Bar Association’s continuing legal education panel for developing countries and has taught negotiation and mediation skills to law teachers, legal practitioners and paralegals in Southern, Central, East and West Africa.
David has helped to draft legal aid legislation for Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Kenya; has advised on the setting up and improving of legal aid schemes in Lithuania, Kyrghyzstan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Moldova, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Somaliland (Somalia), Myanmar (Burma) and Nigeria; trained paralegals in South Africa, Mongolia and Malawi; helped to develop paralegal advice offices and materials for Sierra Leone, Malawi, Mongolia, Moldova, Cambodia and Indonesia; provided professional legal training in Namibia, Zambia, Malawi and Ghana and clinical legal education training for Nigeria, Uganda, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan; and conducted medical law workshops for Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and for Iraqi doctors in Kuwait.
He has hosted legal aid, clinical legal education and paralegal Study Visits from Lithuania, Kyrghyzstan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Mongolia, Moldova, Indonesia, Cambodia, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Somalia (Somaliland).
Professor McQuoid-Mason has published more than 130 articles in law and medical journals. He has contributed over fifty chapters to books, and co-authored seven books including Law of Obligations (1978) and work books entitled Human Rights for All (1991) and Democracy for All (1994).
He has co-authored:
Professor McQuoid-Mason is sole author of text books on the Law of Privacy in South Africa (1978) and A Guide to Legal Aid in South Africa (1982). He was also author of the first five Student Texts and five Instructor's Manuals for lay people in the Street Law series which provide a law-related education programme for secondary school children and community-based organisations in South Africa that have now been consolidated as Street Law South Africa Learner’s Manual 2 ed (2004) and Educator’s Manual 2 ed (2005).
David is a co-editor of the Journal for Juridical Science and the South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, and serves on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Legal Practice, the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education, the Journal of Commonwealth Law and Legal Education, Legal Ethics and the Tydskrif vir Hedendaagse Romeins-Hollandse Reg.
Professor McQuoid-Mason has delivered over 115 papers at national and over 170 at international conferences, and runs frequent workshops on human rights and democracy for school teachers, community leaders, youth leaders, women's groups, trade unions, university students and school children. He serves on the boards of several human rights and cultural bodies.