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The Restatement of African Customary Law: A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

In 1959 the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London received a grant from the Nuffield Foundation to finance a comprehensive plan for the systematic recording and restatement of African customary law. The Project was an ambitious one, aiming to cover 16 countries in Anglophonic Africa, containing several hundred different bodies of customary law. Although limited in the first instance to the law relating to marriage, the family, land tenure, and succession, this is still an enormous undertaking. After a rather slow start, the Project is now well under way, and the appearance in print of its first major publication1 affords a convenient opportunity for an assessment of its methods, aims, and progress to date.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

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References

page 221 note 1 Cotran, Eugene, Report on Customary Criminal Offences in Kenya (Nairobi, 1963). Judicial and Legal Systems of Africa, edited by Allott, A. N. (London, 1962), could be described as a by-product of the Restatement Project in that the main contributors were Research Officers of the Project.Google Scholar

page 222 note 1 Since 1960 the Faculty of Law of the University of Khartoum has been responsible for the Sudan Law Project, which is primarily concerned with documentation, and not restricted to customary law. This is financed and administered independently of the Restatement Project, which does not include the Sudan; but there has been close liaison between the two. The first part of a ‘Bibliography of Sudan Law’ was published in The Sudan Law Journal and Reports (Khartoum, 1960).Google Scholar

page 227 note 1 See especially Bohannan, P. J., Justice and Judgment among the Tiv (Oxford, 1957).Google Scholar