First Chief Justice of the Union of South Africa, born at Paarl, Cape Colony, in June 1842. Descended from the Huguenots who settled in that part of the Cape, he was educated at the South African College, Cape Town, and went to Utrecht and Berlin universities. In 1865 he was called to the bar by the Inner Temple, and in the same year returned to South Africa and began practice as an advocate of the Supreme Court of Cape Colony. His success was immediate. Entering Cape politics in 1866, he was elected a member of the House of Assembly, became attorney-general of the Colony in 1872, and two years later was appointed Chief Justice of the Cape. In that high office he speedily confounded critics of his appointment. The Roman-Dutch law of the Colony, admirable in its logic and symmetry, was ill-fitted to the complications of modern conditions, and it was the life-work of de Villiers to adapt it to these needs. This he did with a conspicuous success which has secured for his name a place high on the roll of those great judges who have done the work of British civilization in many parts of the world. De Villiers was knighted in 1880, was created a K.C.M.G. a year later, and in 1910 was raised to the peerage on his assumption of the post of Chief Justice of the newly formed Union of South Africa. He died on the 2nd of September 1914.
In the work of moulding the instrument of union he had borne a great if not a decisive part. Throughout his career he had taken a constant interest in the politics of Cape Colony and of South Africa—an interest which had never degenerated into partisanship, which had throughout been inspired by a true and enlightened patriotism, which had never lacked the touch of courageous plain speech at the many moments of crisis through which his country had passed. Universal recognition of these outstanding qualities made the appointment of de Villiers as president of the National Convention inevitable, though it must be said that, as the work of the Convention drew towards completion, there were murmurs—and not without justification—that long years on the bench had done something to affect his natural aptitude for presiding over the deliberations of such a body. These criticisms, however well justified, should not detract from the greatness of his achievement, both as a judge and as a figure in the tortured public life of South Africa during the hazardous years of his career. As a judge he touched genius. Acute, unbiased, learned in the crabbed texts of Roman-Dutch law, he added to these gifts the art of keeping steadily in mind the practical needs of the life of his country as affected by his judgments. Equity rather than precedent was his mentor. With the bar his relations were those of a wise and revered adviser. During repeated visits to Great Britain he shared with known distinction in the work of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the value of his assistance to that body was recognized more than once in public by his colleagues.
