Dr. Jan van Zyl Smit is the Director of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), where he leads rule of law research and promotion programmes that engage with parliamentary, judicial, business and youth audiences. Jan’s research focuses on the judiciary, often in constitutional reform contexts, including appointments, tenure and special transitional processes such as vetting of serving judges. He has advised on judicial issues in Armenia, The Gambia, Kenya, Kosovo, Nigeria, Poland, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom, and has helped to develop international standards and model laws with the OSCE-ODIHR, Commonwealth Secretariat and currently the International Bar Association (Judicial Selection Toolkit project in progress). He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and previously clerked at the Constitutional Court of South Africa.