Jonathan Klaaren was born in the United States in 1963. He was educated at Harvard College and the University of Cape Town before studying law at Columbia School of Law and at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is currently (2003) a professor of law at the University of the Witwatersrand, a Director of the Research Unit for Law and Administration (RULA), a member of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), one of the founding staff of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), and on the board of the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC) in Cape Town. At present he is also enrolled for a PhD at Yale University.

Klaaren has extensive legal experience in both South Africa and the U.S.A. He was a law clerk to Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, is a member of the State Bar in both Connecticut and New York, and is an advocate in the South African High Court.

Klaaren has numerous publications (chapters, articles, book reviews, books) to his name on an array of subjects including human rights, forced migration, the electoral process, constitutional law, and freedom of information legislation. Most notably, he is co-editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights and of Chaskalson et al., Constitutional Law of South Africa (1999) and was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Human Rights Review. He is co-author of The Promotion of Access to Information Act Commentary (2002) and The Promotion of Administrative Justice Act Benchbook (2001).

One of Klaaren's main concerns in the last decade has been with the process of creating and refining freedom of information legislation for South Africa. This is necessary to enact the Constitutions provision of right of access to information. This concern was a primary one with Professor Etienne Mureinik. This process began in 1994 with the appointment (by then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki) of a task team on open democracy. This team used prior comparative research conducted by CALS (including Klaaren) and consulted widely with government bureaucrats and interested members of the public to form a set of principles on which to base the legislation. The draft Open Democracy Bill, which was presented to Cabinet in 1996, was the result.

After considering the draft Bill, a modified version was introduced to Parliament by Cabinet in 1998. During the parliamentary process, the Ad Hoc Joint Committee on the Open Democracy Bill made substantial changes to the Bill. The sections on whistle blowers and protection of privacy were removed and the right of access to information of private bodies was expanded upon. The Bill was passed by Parliament in 2000 as the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

Not only was Klaarens research used by the task team on open democracy, he was also a member of the Open Democracy Advice Forum (ODAF) and the Open Democracy Working Group. The ODAF was a consultative body that dissolved before the Open Democracy Bill was passed. The Working Group was a precursor academic group to the task team that also disbanded before passage of the Open Democracy Bill.

AJA: Administrative Justice Act -

GTZ: German Technical Co - operation

ODAC: Open Democracy Advice Centre -

PAIA: Promotion of Access to Information Act -

PAJA: Promotion of Administrative Justice Act -

RULA: Research Unit on Law Administration -

SAHRC: South Africa Human Rights Commission -