He was a member of the Uganda Constitutional Commission (The Odoki Commission) which drafted the Uganda 1995 Constitution. He was the Chairman of the Uganda Constitutional Review Commission which was charged with reviewing the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda and a member of the Committee of Experts which drafted the 2010 Constitution for the Republic of Kenya’.

In 2015, he led a team of experts from Uganda and Kenya that reviewed and made proposals on the draft Constitution of Tanzania and presented their findings to the Warioba Committee, under the auspices of Kituo cha Katiba. He has served as a member of the Judicial Service Commission of Uganda entrusted with the selection of Judges for the Courts of Uganda and on the Law Council of the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs.

Prof. Ssempebwa has held the roles of President of the Uganda Law Society and of the East African Law Society. He has achieved the Rank of “Senior Counsel” in the Courts of Uganda on personal merit. He has participated in ground-breaking litigation (including successfully the first case brought before the East African Court of Justice) and has been instrumental in the formulation of the numerous laws and Acts in Uganda. Since the 1980s, he has been involved in important public interest litigation as a litigant as well as counsel in both in Uganda and, after the establishment of the East African Community, at the East African Court of Justice.

He started his teaching career in 1969 at University College Dar-es Salaam, and he also taught law at Makerere University and the University of Zambia. He has published widely, the most recent being a book on East African Community Law. He sits on the Boards of several major corporate bodies and Government Parastatals in Uganda. He has a Degree in Law from the University of East Africa at Dar-es-salaam (1968) where he was a John F. Kennedy Scholar; and a Masters of Law from Queen’s University Belfast.