This article contextualizes the debate about the implications of the investment treaty regime for regulatory autonomy. It points out that, to understand why the investment treaty regime limits sovereign powers and to be able to reconstruct a regime to make it responsive to the needs of both foreign investors and host countries, it is necessary to revisit the history of investment protection by treaty and assess the terms of investment treaties in relation to that history. The article argues that investment protection by treaty was primarily aimed at protecting the private business interests of investors from the developed world who invested abroad. This overarching historical objective influenced the terms of investment treaties. This is manifested in the terms of classical investment treaties which provide for absolute rights for foreign investors. The article calls for the reconstruction of investment treaties to make room for public interest regulation.

In the closing paragraph of his inaugural lecture Law and Language, Professor Allott referred to what he termed “a daunting obstacle” to the intensive study of African legal systems.

That obstacle is the rapid disappearance, before our very eyes, of the traditional systems that we have proposed to study. A generation ago there would not have been that difficulty; but today the traditional tribunals have vanished in many African countries where their place has been taken by statutory local courts. Even where the traditional courts appear to have survived, at least in name, they are usually affected by the impact of western law and institutions and of central government control.

Those words were written in 1965. How true and necessary they were is shown by the fact that more than fifty years previously—even more than “a generation ago”—the impact of “western” influences upon the Tswana peoples of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now the Republic of Botswana) had already led to many changes in the indigenous legal system, although, at that time, the “traditional courts” still survived virtually intact and not merely “in name”.

The nature and extent of those changes can be readily ascertained by the fortunate chance that, there are still available the records of approximately 470 cases tried, over a period of six and a half years, in the highest traditional court of the Ngwaketse, a major Tswana chiefdom.

The more the self-government of Nigeria becomes a reality, the more important is the question of the independence of the judiciary and the more relevant is the question of the law of contempt of court. The judiciary is mainly staffed by British and Nigerian judges and magistrates drawn from the different national groups and regions of the Federation. It is therefore not impossible that as more cases of political interest go before the courts, the judges and magistrates may be exposed to unnecessary suspicion or pressures because of their places of origin, whatever the colour of their skins. Let me illustrate this point.

The uncertainties which surround any attempt to modify social behaviour through legislation are well recognised. So too is the probability that such uncertainties will multiply in a “plural” context; where, for example, national legislation is imposed upon formerly autonomous groups in the period following their incorporation. But even if we take it for granted that desired behavioural changes are unlikely to appear as direct, matching results of legislative action, we should equally avoid the assumption that law made at the centre will have no impact on the periphery. Even in the absence of efforts towards enforcement, knowledge of an enactment (however slight or incorrect) is likely to be utilised and thus carried over into the sphere of action with results not necessarily foreseen by the legislator. Some response is all the more probable in a case like that of the Tswana, for whom the idea of legislation being used to introduce desired changes was entrenched long before the coming of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (see Schapera, 1943a: 1970).

Since the day when, in my first year of teaching, I found myself trying to explain the feudal origins of trover to a puzzled class of Sudanese students, I have had occasional flickers of doubt whether the English law of torts has been one of Britain's most appropriate colonial legacies. One journey down the Lagos-Ibadan road should suffice to raise questions about the suitability of the common-law action for negligence as an instrument for compensating for or reducing road accidents in Nigeria; while the amount of damages awarded in some East African personal injuries actions, like the Mercedes Benz, contrasts sharply with the general living standards of the vast majority of the local population. Nevertheless the distinction between libel and slander, and between aggravated and punitive damages, and even some survivals from the Year Books have found their way into the law reports and treatises of some African jurisdictions. The elegant generalities of civilian doctrines of extra-contractual obligation seem, not surprisingly, to have made the transition to warmer climates more smoothly.

The sole issue of importance in this case was the choice of law for determining entitlement to the estate. The most remarkable of the court's holdings is the proposition that Moslem law governs the estate of an intestate Moslem because it is the customary law to which he was subject. Before discussing this it is necessary to examine the line of reasoning by which it was reached.

This is an examination of the circumstances in which, according to legal authorities, land may become family land in the customary law of Ghana.3 There may occasionally be difficulty in discovering whether the acquisition was by a wider family or by a branch (or segment) of it, since each such smaller group constitutes a “family” for different purposes. Normally, however, the circumstances give a clear answer, and difficulties on this point rarely reach the courts. If, for example, the narrower family lived in a different part of the country, or acted in the transaction through its own head rather than the overall head, or was already regarded by members of the other branches as a separate entity conducting its own affairs, the acquisition will accrue to this smaller family. The only serious difficulties in this respect have occurred when the acquisition was by intestate succession, a means which will not be discussed in detail. Therefore the distinction drawn by Sarbah4 between “ancestral property” and “family property” will not be followed here.

The Ninth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (the Ninth Congress), was held in Cairo, Egypt from 29 April to 8 May, 1995. It followed the sequence of United Nations quinquennial congresses on the prevention of crime and die treatment of offenders which began in 1955 as a direct continuation of die international penitentiary congresses that had been organized by the International Penal and Penitentiary Commission (IPPC) since the 19tii century. The congresses are convened by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on die basis of General Assembly Resolution 415(V) of 1950. The Nindi Congress was attended by delegates from 138 states, several United Nations offices and organs, including specialized agencies, various inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations and over 190 individual experts. This was die first time the Congress was held on the African continent.

Between 1999 and 2007, a popular Labour-led movement led a pro-poor struggle to resist the fuel price hike policy of the Nigerian government. Waged in the context of the poverty in which nearly 70 per cent of Nigerians lived, the operation of powerful incentives to raise fuel prices, and Labour's extraordinary socio-political leverage, these struggles triggered much government frustration. One of the strategies adopted by the government to legitimize its attempt to repress the movement was to resort to the courts. This article analyses, from a socio-legal perspective, the key cases relating to the validity of the government's attempts to repress the struggles. The article concludes that, although both pro- and anti-movement trends can be observed in the jurisprudence, the anti-movement tendency having so far prevailed in terms of formal legal precedent, the pro-movement (ie pro-poor) decisions have, as a result of their massive popular legitimacy, actually functioned as the “living law.”

After the political and constitutional transformation of Malawi between 1992 and 1995, numerous laws and various aspects of the legal system have been undergoing review to fit the new constitutional order. As expected, some of the legislative activity has focused on employment and labour relations. The law on these issues has ossified for almost the entire three decades of independence and Dr. Banda's single-party rule. Labour-related issues were also very prominent during the transition from single-party to multi-party rule. Multitudes of unemployed or under-employed people, and workers clamouring for improved wages, filled the ranks of campaigners and agitators for political change. The trade union movement also provided some of the erstwhile leaders of the political campaigns. The end-result is that Malawi has a revised Constitution with prominent provisions on labour issues, and a set of new labour law statutes. This article describes and assesses reforms introduced under two of the main statutes, the Labour Relations Act 1996 and the Employment Act 2000, in the light of the dictates and characteristic features of the 1995 Constitution. The article is a sequel to a review and assessment of the law carried out prior to these reforms.

Federalism presents a dilemma for the implementation of international human rights law in those African states that operate federal constitutions. Central governments in these states enjoy international legal personality, make treaties and represent their states as parties to those treaties, yet internal legislative competence over some issues regulated by treaty is commonly shared between central and regional governments. Consequently, while central governments bear responsibility for transforming international standards into national law, challenges arise in areas such as the protection of children from child marriage, where they lack exclusive national legislative competence. How have these states managed to implement international law without violating their own constitutions? Applying a comparative approach, this article argues that African federal states have employed two main models to overcome the dilemma, neither of which has been totally effective. Drawing lessons from federal states outside Africa, the article suggests other mechanisms to perfect Africa's two main models.

The 1994 Malawian Constitution is unique in that it, among other things, recognizes administrative justice as a fundamental right and articulates the notion of constitutional supremacy. This right and the idea of constitutional supremacy have important implications for Malawi's administrative law, which was hitherto based on the common law inherited from Britain. This article highlights the difficulties that Malawian courts have faced in reconciling the right to administrative justice as protected under the new constitution with the common law. In doing so, it offers some insights into what the constitutionalization of administrative justice means for Malawian administrative law. It is argued that the constitution has altered the basis and grounds for judicial review so fundamentally that the Malawian legal system's marriage to the English common law can be regarded as having irretrievably broken down as far as administrative law is concerned.

DEFINING THE LIMITS OF PERMISSIBLE EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PERSONS LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA: HOFFMAN V. SOUTH AFRICAN AIRWAYS [2000] 12 BLLR 1365.

Perhaps the most positive and exciting aftermath of the apartheid era is the construction of the new South Africa upon the foundation of a Constitution and other legal instruments that are unanimous and unambiguous in two respects. The first is in their proscription of unfair discrimination and the second is in their permission of statutory and other measures aimed at eliminating the effects of past discrimination on those groups of persons who were at the receiving end of same. The provisions of these instruments as well as their tenor and spirit reveal an unmistakable national resolve to break from a culture of racial discrimination to a constitutionally protected culture of human rights for South Africans of all ages, classes and colours. Without doubt, the most important of those provisions is the equality clause of the Bill of Rights contained in the second chapter of the Constitution. This probably follows from a realization of the fact that equality is fundamental to “the maintenance and propagation of human rights in a democratic body politic, particularly in an acutely divided society” such as South Africa.