Few living lawyers can say that a constitution passed through their hands. Dr Kamal Hossain can. Barrister, Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and one of the most internationally recognised jurists the country has produced, he chaired the Constitution Drafting Committee of the newly independent Bangladesh in 1972 — and the Constitution adopted that November, with its declarations of fundamental rights and its architecture of parliamentary democracy, bears the imprint of his craftsmanship in clause after clause.

The public offices came early: Minister of Law in the first post-independence government, steering the constitutional project; later Minister of Foreign Affairs, representing at the podium a State he had helped design at the drafting table. But it is the length and breadth of the legal career since that makes the profile remarkable. Across the following decades Dr Hossain built an international practice and reputation spanning constitutional law, international arbitration — including major investor-State and petroleum disputes — and human rights, alongside service in United Nations roles, among them as Special Rapporteur, and long association with international legal institutions. At home, his chamber became a nursery for generations of constitutional and commercial lawyers, and his appearances in landmark public interest and constitutional cases kept him at the centre of the law he had helped found.