(The European, 22-28 July 1994)

JUDGE Richard J Goldstone is a late blossomer. Born into a middleclass family in Boksburg, South Africa, in 1938, he studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and practised as a barrister in Johannesburg for 17 years.

He married after graduation in 1962, and has two daughters. His hobbies are "music, walking, reading and wine". Most of his legal work was commercial and he showed no sign of political interest until he was appointed judge of the Transvaal supreme court in 1980. Then he demonstrated his independence in a series of judgments challenging the legality of apartheid. He ruled that people could not be cleared from their homes under the Group Areas Act unless the government provided alternative accommodation.

During the state of emergency he was one of the few judges to use his powers to visit detainees. Some called him "the comrade judge". While his more accommodating colleagues saw it as political grandstanding, others admired the assertion of principle.

Goldstone first came to prominence outside South Africa as investigator into the Sebokeng shootings, when police fired into a crowd of 50,000 demonstrators. He established that the police had acted unlawfully and, in a rare move for South Africa, some were prosecuted.

His reputation made him a natural choice to head the investigation into public violence which was the first fruit of the peace accord between the last white government and the African National Congress in 1991. His report spared neither the police, who were accused of fomenting violence, nor the warring black political parties.

He had been mooted as a possible chief justice of South Africa. He will relish the higher political profile offered by his new position - and that may be an advantage when he tries to bring Europe's notoriously elusive war criminals to justice.

Ian WILLIAMS