Prof. Michelle Kelly-Louw has been heavily involved with the drafting of South African bills and legislation which has worked in unison with her research outputs.
Michelle Kelly-Louw is a professor of law at Unisa and instructs the law of negotiable instruments, insolvency law and banking law. She has published widely in the fields of insolvency law, banking law and consumer credit law. Her research has been cited and quoted on various occasions by the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal and, to add to these achievements, she’ll be receiving the 2013 Women Research in Leadership Award.
She completed her doctoral degree in international banking law, entitled Selective Legal Aspects of Bank Demand Guarantees in 2008. Her LLD thesis was the first in South Africa to specifically consider bank demand guarantees in depth and has since been published in Germany.
She was one of the architects of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005, and, therefore, a large part of her research is based on first-hand knowledge that she gained during the drafting process. In 2012 she wrote a book for the consumer credit law specialist Consumer Credit Regulation in South Africa and submitted a paper for a peer-reviewed international book to be published in 2013 dealing with the National Credit Act and also submitted a chapter on this Act for the Banking Adjudicator’s Handbook to be published in 2013.
Currently, she’s focusing on consumer credit law with a strong emphasis on the protection of the users of credit and particularly paying close attention to conducting research on improving the mechanisms to alleviate consumer over-indebtedness and to prevent reckless lending by credit providers.
Kelly-Louw’s work has made her one of the foremost experts in her field. In 2008 she received the Unisa Principal’s prize for excellence in research and a year later she also received the Unisa Resilience in Research Award. In August 2010 she received the South African Department of Science and Technology’s award for Distinguished Young Woman Scientist (Academic Excellence in Social Sciences or Humanities) and in 2011 she received the Unisa Women’s Forum 2011 Woman of the Year Award (for Achievement). She’s been extensively involved in the drafting of legislation, including the Land and Agricultural Development Bank Act 15 of 2002, the Business Recovery Bill of 2003, the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003 and among numerous others. “One of my previous articles was referred to with approval in one of the South African Law Reform Commission’s Reports and my recent research has been quoted and cited on various occasions by the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and other jurists and this bears testimony that my research plays a role in shaping the South African law,” she says.
*Written by Rajiv Kamal
