Judge James L. Mwalusanya (Rtd)
Judge James Mwalusanya is a renowned human rights activist and defender. He was born in 1943 in Rungwe District, Mbeya Region, and was educated from primary to university level in Tanzania where he pursued legal studies. He started his career in the Judiciary Department in 1969 and rose to Judge of the High Court of Tanzania in 1984. He was a hard-worker who showed the way in promoting human rights and good governance in Tanzania. His decisions contributed to the development of human rights not only in Tanzania, but throughout the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the world.
In 2004 he was awarded the Amnesty International Human Rights Award. He was awarded the MajiMaji Human Rights Award in 2005 by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) for his role in promoting and defending human rights in Tanzania. Justice Mwalusanya presided over many constitutional and human rights cases, including the famous case of Republic v. Mbushuu @ Dominic Mnyaroje and Another, High Court of Tanzania at Dodoma, Original Jurisdiction, Criminal Sessions Case No. 44 of 1991, Reported in [1994] 2 LRC 335, in which he denounced the death sentence as unconstitutional, and as amounting to torture, inhuman treatment, and degrading form of punishment. Judge Mwalusanya gave a landmark judgment in the case of Chumchua s/o Marwa v. Officer i/c of Musoma Prison and Another, High Court of Tanzania at Mwanza, in which he set what the Rule of Law means. He has declared a plethora of laws in Tanzania as unconstitutional and thus led to landmark changes both in those laws and the enforcement of the Bill of Rights in Tanzania. His decisions have been cited quite often by scholars as well as courts across Africa and the world. Judge Mwalusanya is an all times human rights defender. He presided over many decisions while in Mwanza and Dodoma. He was a determined judge in fundamental human rights cases that he had to be transferred from Mwanza after wrecking havoc there, to Dodoma which was supposed to be less litigious. He was relentless and continued with his crusade on unjust laws. Not only did he uphold fundamental human rights by adopting the purposive construction or the judicial activist role in many cases, in most of his writings and oral presentations he also urged other judicial officers to do the same. He always faced mounting pressure and criticism from the Court of Appeal and was once labelled by the Court of Appeal of Tanzania as ‘a judicial ambulance chaser’ due to his role in raising constitutional and human rights issues of importance in many cases in which the litigants had not noticed them. Judge Mwalusanya was well known that some litigants traveled from all over the country to file their human rights cases at Dodoma. In Rev. Christopher Mtikila v Attorney General (1993), the government tried to intervene by asking Judge Mwalusanya to disqualify himself from presiding over that case because of his many legal writings and expressed opinion. He has written many articles and chapters in books mostly on human rights in Tanzania. He is one of the persons who signed for Universal Declaration of Human Rights 50th Anniversary Campaign in June 1998. He retired from service on health conditions. He lives at Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania where he is the President and Founder of the Legal Aid Association that gives legal aid to the indigent. Today, Tanzanians live his wisdom and decisions on fundamental human rights.