Michelle Louw

Michelle Kelly-Louw is a professor of law at the University of Cape Town. She holds a doctoral degree in international banking law. She has published widely in the fields of insolvency law, banking law and consumer credit law and her research has been cited with approval by the South African courts, including the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, on several occasions. She has received five research awards, including the South African Department of Science and Technology’s award for Distinguished Young Woman Scientist (Academic Excellence in Social Sciences) (2010). Throughout her career she has been extensively involved in the drafting of legislation. She was one of the drafters of the Land and Agricultural Development Bank Act 15 of 2002. She was a member of the Business South Africa’s Task Group on Insolvency Law who investigated the proposed Unified Insolvency and Business Recovery Bill of 2003. She drafted the consequential amendments contained in the National Credit Act 34 of 2005, provided expert advice to the drafting team and also assisted with the drafting of the 2006 regulations to this Act. During 2005 she was one of the initial drafters that worked on proposals for a new South African Deeds Registries Act and Sectional Titles Act. In April 2010 she was appointed by the South African National Treasury and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs as the drafter of the Financial Misconduct Regulations issued in terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003 and the Disciplinary Regulations for Senior Managers that were issued in terms of the Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000. For three years she served on the panel of legal experts (legislative drafting) for the South African National Treasury and the legal panel of the South African National Roads Agency Limited Property Portfolio. She was a visiting research fellow at the University of Westminster, London (2010) and a research fellow at the Institute of Advance Legal Studies in London (2016). She is the immediate past President of the International Association of Consumer Law. She is a member of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law, an exco member of the International Academy of Financial Consumers and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). She is a member of various South African and international law journals. She serves on the advisory boards of various local and international law journals. She was also appointed to the Specialist Committee of the National Research Foundation’s Rating System (Law) for a period of three (3) years (from Feb 2023–Feb 2026). She was also re-appointed by the South African Minister of Science and Innovation to serve on the adjudication panel of the SA Women in Science Awards (SAWiSA) for three years (from 2023 to 2025).