scholarly journals ‘CHANGING TRADITIONS TO MEET CURRENT ALTERING CONDITIONS’: CUSTOMARY LAW, AFRICAN COURTS AND THE REJECTION OF CODIFICATION IN KENYA, 1930–60

1999 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRETT L. SHADLE
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
White Line ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Written Law ◽  
Unwritten Law

If the aim of British colonizers, Frederick Lugard wrote, was to civilize Africans ‘and to devote thought to those matters which…most intimately affect their daily life and happiness, there are few of greater importance than the constitution of native courts’. Moreover, he argued that only from native courts employing customary law was it ‘possible to create rudiments of law and order, to inculcate a sense of responsibility, and evolve among a primitive community some sense of discipline and respect for authority’. Britain had not the manpower, the money nor the mettle to rule by force of arms alone. Essentially, in order to make colonial rule work with only a ‘thin white line’ of European administrators, African ideas of custom and of law had to be incorporated into the new state systems. In a very real way, customary law and African courts provided the ideological and financial underpinnings for European colonial rule.In Kenya from at least the 1920s, but especially in the 1940s and 1950s, administrators struggled with the question of how customary law could best be used in African courts. Prominent among their concerns was the codification of customary law, against which most administrators vigorously fought. British officials believed that reducing African custom to written law and placing it in a code would ‘crystalize’ it, altering its fundamentally fluid or evolutionary nature. Colonizers naturally harbored intentions of using the law to shape society (as Cooper has demonstrated for the Kenya coast) but a fluid, unwritten law provided much greater latitude to pursue these goals. It was necessary, as one administrator put it, to allow ‘changing traditions to meet current altering conditions’.This case study of Kenya offers a different understanding of the history of customary law.

The office of qāḍī in Dār Fūr: a preliminary inquiry

1977 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. O'Fahey
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Independent Judiciary ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Written Law

A written law and a separate if not independent judiciary were among the most distinctive innovations brought by Islam to the Sudanic region. The history of the reception of the sharī'a and the institutions associated with it, of its modifications of the local customary law and of the changes wrought upon it by the same customary law may help to provide a framework for more general discussions of the process of islamization within Africa. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the history of the office of qāḍī, or judicial official, in the Dār Fūr sultanate, which occupied what is now the westernmost province of the Democratic Republic of the Sudan between the mid-seventeenth century and 1916. Thus I am not so much concerned with the content of the law, whether customary or Islamic, administered within the sultanate as with who administered it.

Are All Politics Local? A Case Study of Local Conditions in a Period of “Law and Order” Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 664 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Law And Order ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Politics And Government ◽  
Local Environments ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
State And Local Government ◽  
The Law ◽  
State And Local

This article explores how voters in Contra Costa County, California, came to support aggressive criminal justice policies that helped to drive prison growth. As this case study shows, the antitax movement’s successes in the latter 1970s had important implications for local and state politics and government that ultimately shaped support for the law and order movement. Institutional structures, especially the state’s easily accessible proposition process and the considerable political power of homeowners, facilitated the antitax movement’s successes. This reflected and reinforced deep tensions between state and local government and created new problems and dilemmas for state and local lawmakers. Politically, the antitax movement’s successes helped to mobilize a powerful constituency of affluent property owners receptive to tough anticrime measures and provided a blueprint for the law and order movement’s political success. While state and local lawmakers struggled to manage new challenges, increasingly active and well-organized law and order campaigns thrived in state and local environments.

A Postcolonial Perspective: Law and the Literary World

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-318
Author(s):  
Amanda Ruth Waugh Lagji
Keyword(s):  
Law And Literature ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Customary Laws

This commentary shows the advantages of a postcolonial approach to law and literature, using Nuruddin Farah’s novel Maps as a suggestive case study to examine Somalia’s laws and literature and the colonial context embedded in both. Whereas Western and European juridical systems are often silent referents in law and literature scholarship, my reading of Maps also places it in dialogue with Somali customary laws and culture. I conclude my commentary by bringing together the history of Somali customary law and my reading of Maps to offer methodological suggestions for law and literature given this particular postcolonial perspective.

From Trust to Contract: The Legal Language of Managerial Ideology, 1920–1980

1992 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Kaufman ◽  
Lawrence Zacharias
Keyword(s):  
Technological Development ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Tender Offer ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Organizational Needs

Although the managerial function arises out of organizational needs imposed by market competition and technological development, managers' professional status has come in large part from legal conceptions that perceive the managerially run firm as an institutional bulwark for modern democracy. This article examines how the law, through its doctrines of trust and contract, has made and unmade management as a semi-public profession. The article explores the history of tender-offer regulation as a case study of this process.

A critical legal history of French banking and industrialisation: an alternative to the law and development framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-251
Author(s):  
Jamee K Moudud
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Law And Development ◽  
Development Framework ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law

Abstract Money is central to production and the constitutional theory of money has emphasised its fundamentally public foundations, with flows of credit being demand-determined. Using France as a case study, this paper challenges the Law and Development framework by discussing law’s constitutive role in promoting industrialisation via the mobilisation of credit.

scholarly journals Modern landscaping and medicinal plant loss as a legacy of colonialism in Nigeria (Lokoja as case study).

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-203
Author(s):  
Michael Oloyede Alabi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indigenous Plants ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

This paper aims to trace the history of colonial urban planning in Nigerian cities, its legacies of urban design and beautification of the environment. In Nigeria the town planning institutional frame works was established under the colonial rule which persisted to the post colonial period. In this sense the colonial era was a phase in which European institutions and values systems were transferred to Nigeria, one of which is the concept of environmental beautification with the use of plants. An investigation is carried out on the influence of colonial rule on landscaping and urban design. Findings show that the introduction of deliberate landscaping to city planning have over the years systematically led to loss of valuable indigenous plants partly due to the introduction of exotic plants. These are plants that initially were seen as sources of cure for several ailments. There is therefore the need for a rethink as to the type of plants to be used for landscaping.

scholarly journals PENGHULU AND MARRIAGE PROBLEMATICS OF BOUNDARY SOCIETY IN ENTIKONG AND SEKAYAM WEST KALIMANTAN

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ishom El-saha
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Marital Problems ◽  
Border Area ◽  
West Kalimantan ◽  
Border Areas ◽  
The Law ◽  
Written Law ◽  
To Receive

This study focuses on the problem’s task of Penghulu about registering marriages and problems of unregistering marriages in the border areas of Indonesia and Malaysia, especially at Entikong-Sekayam, West Kalimantan. Communities in the area complained about the absence of KUA Staff which caused them not to receive maximum service. While on staff’s KUA perception, they have worked but the community does not want to adjust to them, such as obeying the applicable provisions. There is a possibility of a gap between written law as a reference for KUA Staff and customary law for communities. With the law in action approach, it’s found legal, social, economic, and political factors that cause marital problems in the border area.

Adopting in the Shadows: False Registration as a Method of Adoption in Postcolonial South Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-521
Author(s):  
Sungyun Lim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Choson Dynasty ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Abstract This article examines false registration as a method of domestic adoption in South Korea. The article argues that the practice of falsely registering adoptees as natural births in the family registry emerged in response to the highly restrictive adoption laws in South Korea. As adopting agnatic kin for the purpose of family succession was deemed the only legitimate form of adoption, significant hurdles existed for other kinds of adoption in Korea. This article examines the history of domestic adoption in Korea and highlights the legal hurdles to domestic adoption. These restrictive adoption customs first originated during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) as a prescription for yangban elite; they were then codified as customary law for all Koreans under Japanese colonial rule (1910–45). The ban on non-agnatic adoption continued in the postcolonial period when it was codified in the new Civil Code of 1960. Multiple legal reforms were attempted since the 1970s to promote domestic adoptions, but change was slow. This article argues that the highly restrictive nature of adoption laws in South Korea produced an adoption regime that existed largely outside of the legal realm.

The Revival of Preventive Detention in New Zealand 1986–93

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Meek
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Sexual Offending ◽  
Preventive Detention ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Dangerous Offenders ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
History Of

A sensational offence by a recently released prisoner with a long history of sexual offending led to the scope of preventive detention being extended in 1987 prompting a dramatic increase in use of this sentence by the New Zealand courts. A committee of inquiry had previously criticised this sentence, which provides for the indefinite detention of dangerous offenders, as ‘arbitrary, selective and inequitable’ and recommended its abolition. In the 1987–93 period, a total of 48 persons received this sentence compared with 28 during the previous 19 years. The revival of preventive detention is seen as a case study of law and order politics as this previously little used sentence became a central feature of the efforts of successive governments to respond to increasing levels of violent crime. The principal deficiencies of this sentence are identified as (1) inconsistency in its use; (2) its lack of focus and the Court of Appeal's failure to provide meaningful guidance to judges; and (3) the severity of the sentence which involves detention for a minimum term of 10 years.

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