The description of Bali matrimonial law which follows is based on research undertaken during the first half of 1969, while the author was on secondment from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London to the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences of the Federal University of Cameroon.

The Crown Colonies have for a long time, and for obvious reasons, been regarded as affording a suitable ground for the exercise of the efforts of codifiers, and I believe I am correct in saying that if a Colonial Chief Justice or Attorney-General wishes to gain the favour of the Colonial Office, he offers to codify the laws he helps to administer.

A theme which has not gained much of the attention of scholars of African law is the historical development of European law and legal institutions in Africa. There is a tendency to take their “reception” for granted, as if to say that it is redundant to know how they came to be established on the African soil. By historical development is not meant simply the chronological order of events, treating law almost as a self-contained system in no way related to the environment in which it operates. A more useful approach, it is submitted, would be to evaluate the role of European law and legal institutions in the total context of African social, economic and political development. From our appreciation of the role law has played in the past in the moulding of African societies, we are likely to be more conscious than ever of the importance of law in African development. Furthermore, historical analysis of European law and legal institutions in Africa may yield some insight into the nature of African legal institutions as they are today. This paper, a plea for the historical dimension in African legal studies, discusses the role of a class of men in the English-type courts in Lagos before the legal profession, as we know it, established itself.

The interesting case of Yinusa v. Adesubokan, reported in this issue of the Journal, provides us with an authoritative answer to a question which has long perplexed students of succession law in Nigeria: can a person whose personal law is that of Islam, by electing to make a will under the Wills Act, 1837, thereby deprive his heirs of what they would be entitled to receive were Islamic law to apply to the distribution of the estate? The answer given is that he cannot. This question, which, as is indicated in the judgment, has not been the subject of previous judicial decisions, may not be one which in recent years has aroused any very great passions. Nevertheless, it is one which some thirty years ago was argued among members of the Colonial Service—administrative officers and legal officers—with a surprising fervour and intensity.

The customary oath is woven into the fabric of African traditional life. Owing, however, to the world-wide publicity which was generated by the Mau Mau emergency in the nineteen-fifties, and the more recent publicity following allegations of oathing after the assassination of the late T. J. Mboya in Nairobi in July, 1969, oathing and Kenya have become closely associated in the public mind. The present state of the law with regard to oaths and oathing in Kenya is not entirely satisfactory, and in certain instances it must be stated that the law appears to be honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

English law, as limited or modified, applies as one of the residual systems of law in Northern Nigeria, the other being customary law. The assumption underlying both the reception of English law and the retention of customary law was that both would be eroded and a new system would be created by local legislation and local decisions. While some erosion of both systems has taken place, such a process is necessarily slow and there remains a large area of law where the relationship of the received and retained law to local legislation is difficult to elaborate with any degree of precision. This is particularly true of the relationship of English law to the provisions of the Land Tenure Law and its predecessor, the Land and Native Rights Ordinance. The primary difficulty encountered in this context is the analogy which can be drawn between a lease in English form and the statutory right of occupancy, since the latter interest is granted by the appropriate authority normally, although not necessarily, for a definite term of years and may be governed by covenants which relate to rent, use and occupation, assignment and subletting, recovery of possession and so on.

The law of divorce forms part of a wider subject known as family law,2 and regulates the conditions and procedure for dissolving a marriage3 and the consequences attaching to such a dissolution.