Prof Carstens inspired achievers and staff with his presentation “On becoming a passionate lawyer”, based on excerpts from his article in the 2011 edition of the Pretoria Student Law Review. According to Prof Carstens, a successful career in law was not only dependent on a combination of knowledge, appropriate legal skills and experience, but also required character, personality, dedication, commitment and professionalism. He discussed the principles on rekindling the passion for law amongst law students, including the fundamental skills and values that successful lawyers must possess and continuously actively develop. He further said that the ‘sweetest marrow to be sucked out of the law’ was the preserve of passionate lawyers who strived to be scholarly lawyers. That it was only in the reading, the researching and the writing of the law that truth and beauty abound and living indeed became deliberate.

Prof Carstens concluded his presentation with the inspiring closing remarks of the late Harry Morris QC who wrote:

“Scholars! “Who”, you may ask, “are the scholars?” As I near the end of my thesis and as I recall some 45 years in which my stumbling footsteps have traced the path I offer you for your journey, I feel that I can now answer that question. I am a scholar. As I write, I must think, and I must reason the why and wherefore. And if I pretend to teach, it is no more than a whimsical impertinence on my side. For in the writing and in the thinking and in the evolving of the why and the wherefore, I am teaching - teaching myself. Nor yet do I consider my lessons to have been well learned. Nor yet have I met a colleague who himself is learned beyond learning. Nor yet, least of all, can I be sure that what I advise is free of folly. I trust that I write with humility when I record that even in the greatest have I seen error. And is error anything more than a lesson yet to be learned? In every case, every consultation, every opinion, is to be found something to be learned. There is law to be learned, and foresight, and knowledge of humanity. If from these teachers you do not learn you may well fall by the wayside. May you, too, be one of the scholars”.

Click for a list of the recipients.