Johan van Zyl Steyn was born in Cape Town in 1932, where he matriculated from Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck and studied law at the University of Stellenbosch before reading English as a Rhodes Scholar at University College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar in South Africa in 1958 and appointed senior counsel of the supreme court of South Africa in 1970. He became one of the UK's most prominent Law Lords, having settled in the UK in 1973. In 1977 he married Susan Leonore and has two sons and two daughters from a previous marriage. He became a judge in 1985. In 1995 he was appointed a Law Lord, which at the same time made him Baron Steyn, of Swafield in Norfolk. He retired in September 2005. Since his retirement he has become chairman of the organisation Justice. He was known as one of the most liberal of the UK's 12 law lords.
Along with Baron Leonard Hubert Hoffmann of Chedworth, another South African-born law lord, and three other lords, he made the ruling that former Chilean dictator General Pinochet should not be immune from prosecution for alleged criminal acts during his rule.
Leonard Hubert Hoffmanm was born in Cape Town in 1934, the son of a well-known Jewish solicitor. He studied law at the University of Cape Town, before going to Queen's College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He has twice been director of the English National Opera. Knighted in 1985, he was created a life peer in 1995. He enjoys cycling through Europe. He has been an unpaid director of the Amnesty International Charity Ltd since 1990. His wife Gillian has been a secretary in Amnesty International's London office for many years.
