There can be no doubt that British courts have, in general, built up a most impressive record by, and today enjoy a well-deserved reputation for, their sympathetic and intelligent application of those religious or customary laws, evolved by peoples of a culture and background very different from their own, which they have so often been called upon to administer. But there can be no branch of the law in which Muslim peoples who are subject to the jurisdiction of British courts, or courts trained in English traditions, have been made to suffer so many frustrations—by the judicial infusion of alien ideas, by misinterpretation or basic ignorance of the Islamic doctrines, and even by what can only be termed a rigidity of mind which ill-accords with this illustrious tradition—as in the law of waqf.

Dans le cadre d'une étude comparative des différentes rédactions de droits coutumiers, et en vue d'apporter ainsi une contribution à l'étude des problèmes posés par la rédaction des droits coutumiers africains, ce brefessai est consacré à la rédaction des coutumes en France aux XVème et XVIème siècles.

The first volume of the Sudan Law Journal and Reports has at last appeared. Its publication marks the culmination of over thirty years of spasmodic agitation for an adequate system of law reporting of cases decided in the Civil Courts2 of a country which has been receiving English law under the guise of “justice, equity and good conscience” since 1900.3 In 1926 a Digest of the Decisions of the Court of Appeal of the Sudan was published, containing notes on a selection of some eighty cases decided between 1915 and 1926. It was intended that the Digest should be brought up to date annually, but in fact this was not done, and the next period covered is from January 1st, 1953, to June 30th, 1954, in a Digest of Cases in the Court of Appeal and High Court, prepared by Mr. Justice Stanley-Baker. In 1954 the first eleven judgments of the Sudan Court of Criminal Appeal, set up in 1949, were reported and published in loose-leaf form, the intention being to report and print each decision immediately after its delivery. This was done with two cases.