Ernest Frederick Watermeyer

Ernest Frederick Watermeyer (12 October 1880 – 18 January 1958) was the Chief Justice of South Africa from 1943 to 1950.^[1]

Watermeyer was born in Graaff-Reinet in 1880. He was educated at Stellenbosch Gymnasium, Bath College and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Mathematics, then Law.

He was called to the bar in England by the Inner Temple in 1904 and admitted to the Cape bar in 1905. He became a King's Counsel in 1921. From 1922 to 1927 he was a judge of the Cape Provincial Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa. In 1937 he was promoted to the Supreme Court's Appellate Division. From 1943 until his retirement in 1950 he was Chief Justice of South Africa. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1943.

References

1. Zimmermann, Reinhard (1996). Southern Cross: Civil Law and Common Law in South Africa. Clarendon Press. p. 125.