Israel Aaron (“Isie”) Maisels (19 November 1905 – 8 December 1994) was a judge of the High Court of Rhodesia and the Judge President of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. He practised law in South Africa from 1928 until his retirement in 1992 and was widely regarded as “pre-eminent among his generation of advocates” and “one of the country’s most formidable legal minds.” In addition to a legal practice, he is best known for his defence of those prosecuted for their political beliefs and “as a man whose life and interests reflected a deep concern for human rights and civil liberty.” He was the leader of the defence team in the famous South African Treason Trial of 1956 to 1961 in which the accused, including Nelson Mandela, were all acquitted as well as numerous other cases in which he represented individuals adversely affected by the apartheid government's oppressive legislation. He served on the bench of the High Court of Southern Rhodesia from May 1961 to June 1963. Early life and education Maisels was born in November 1905 in Johannesburg. His father, Henry, had come with his siblings and parents in the 1890s from Pokroy, a small village in Lithuania and his mother from Lodz in Poland. He attended the Marist Brothers’ preparatory and high school and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, graduating from the law school in 1927. He married Muriel Maisels on 28 June 1934 and the couple had four children. Legal career Following his graduation, he served in a firm of attorneys for two years as an “articled clerk” and was admitted to the Bar as an advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa in 1930. In May 1940 he volunteered for the South African Armed Forces and was assigned to the Air Force Intelligence and dispatched to Nairobi, Kenya. He returned to South Africa in 1941 and was discharged from the Army with the rank of Major in October 1944. Prior to his discharge, he declined an offer of the position of Judge Advocate of the Armed Forces. His law practice grew rapidly, and he was appointed a King's Counsel (KC) in 1948 and Queen's Counsel (QC) following the death of King George VI. He served as chairman of the Johannesburg Bar Council from 1952 -1960 and was vice-chairman and acting chairman of the General Council of the South