Over 20 years ago, the Federal High Court was created. It is today the only Court with jurisdiction in matters relating to admiralty in Nigeria. This has, however, not been without some teething problems. Disputes arose over what matters fell within the admiralty jurisdiction of the courts and also as to which courts had admiralty jurisdiction. The recent Admiralty Jurisdiction Decree of 1991 addresses these issues by providing a comprehensive local code in line with the International Convention Relating to the Arrest of Sea-going Ships, 1952. This article traces the development of the admiralty jurisdiction of the Federal High Court and examines the scope of its jurisdiction today.

The Banjul Protocol on Marks Within the Framework of the African Regional Industrial Property Organisation was adopted by the Administrative Council of ARIPO at its Seventeenth Session held at Banjul, The Gambia in November 1993 and the Regulations by the Administrative Council at its Nineteenth Session held at Kariba, Zimbabwe in November 1995. Parties to the Protocol, which came into force on 6 March, 1997, are Malawi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

This article is concerned with a specialized area of constitutional theory and practice, namely the regulation of the foreign affairs powers. Foreign affairs is a wide term which expresses more than mere relations. “Affairs” include matters and things, as well as relationships and a constitutional grant of legitimate plenary powerr. This entails that foreign affairs are matters relating to foreign countries, i.e. affairs other than domestic and, specifically, matters having to do with the interests of the home country in foreign countries. In this context, foreign affairs may be identified as a function. A function is an activity specially fitted for, appropriate to or expected of some particular type of operation because of its peculiar nature, or qualifications. The foreign affairs function, thus, as Bonfield says, may be in an activity specially fitted for, appropriate to, or expected of international relations—the interests of a state in foreign states—due to the peculiar nature or attributes of such relations. In addition, “power” may be defined as the competence to decide and act that is attached to a specific function. Hence the foreign affairs power is the competenbce to decide and act in matters having to do with the interests of the home state in foreing states. It is made up principally of the following elements: treay making, diplomatic relations, recognition of states and governments, and war and peace. Appropriate regulation of the elements of the foreign affairs power is a vital element of good governance in any particular state.

The division of state inhabitants into communities living under different laws opens up possibilities of conflicts problems on an unprecedented scale. These problems may arise not only when members of different communities enter into legal relationships, but also when the parties, whether members of the same community or not, choose to regulate their legal relations in accordance with another personal law. The occurrence of either of these circumstances poses some problems for which the law is difficult or uncertain. This study attempts to examine with particular reference to the Sudan the problem of choice of law to be administered.

In examining the problem of choice of law I shall attempt to show and compare how different systems of personal laws (i.e., where personal laws are administered in their respective courts of nationality, religion or ethnic community and courts which administer two or more personal laws) try to solve choice of law problems. It is apparent that the existence of the lex fori in the former and its absence in the latter should affect the approach to the problem of choice of law. The contrast between the two approaches is striking. The contention here is that systems of personal laws always apply their lex fori and treat questions of choice of law as mere questions of competence.

Despite a constitutional right to water, challenges remain for access to sufficient water in South Africa. This article considers the degree to which current legal provisions perpetuate approaches that are antithetical to genuinely eco-socio-sustainable water access. Water in South Africa has largely been re-cast as a commodity, exposed to market rules, proving problematic for many and giving rise to various responses, including litigation. In the seminal case of Mazibuko, the Constitutional Court failed to provide robust protection to the right to water, providing impetus for the formation of “commons” strategies for water allocation. Indeed, “commoning” is beginning to represent not only an emerging conceptual strand in urban resource allocation, but also a dynamic, contemporary, eco-sensitive, socio-cultural phenomenon, driving innovative, interactive and inclusive forms of planning and social engagement. Against the backdrop of unequal water access, commoning offers glimpses of an empowering and enfranchising subaltern paradigm.

This article focuses on the appointment of judges in Malawi. It explores the constitutional provisions governing judicial appointments and finds that the system established by Malawi's Constitution has manifest weaknesses. For example, the composition of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) is narrow and not representative of Malawian society; there are also no procedures for the JSC to follow in its operations. The article argues that the system for appointing judges has a bearing on the eventual character and integrity of the judiciary itself, hence it is important to align it with the constitution's ideals. In conclusion, the article makes recommendations for improving the system, including by broadening the JSC's composition, adopting a law to stipulate clear and transparent procedures for the JSC and also curbing presidential powers in relation to judicial appointments.

In 1963 a Minimum Sentences Act2 was passed which restricted discretion previously available to judges and magistrates when sentencing convicted persons. No new substantive offences were created by the Act but minimum sentences of imprisonment and corporal punishment were made mandatory for certain itemized property offences (“scheduled offences”). The Act aroused considerable interest both inside and outside this country and there is a long bibliography of comments on it.3 Much of the controversy concerned the mandatory infliction of corporal punishment, of at least 24 strokes, as part of the minimum sentence.4 Many members of the National Assembly were enthusiastic supporters of the corporal punishment provisions,5 although the Government leaders were more restrained: “They are not policies which we like”, said the Second Vice-President, Mr. Kawawa, “and I am convinced that Prisons Officers do not like them either; to administer corporal punishment is an unpleasant thing for any civilised person to do. But we have to make people recognize that to commit an offence against the nation or any of its citizens, is an evil thing which is a disgrace to the man who does it”.6

The legal profession, and legal education (which is the subject of an earlier article), in operational terms form one continuum. On the earlier occasion we depicted legal education as, in essence, referring to “experiences and training which help different kinds of people to understand and use law in society”. In more specific terms, legal education is concerned with the formal or approved stages of education and training, in preparation for service in such legal roles as: representing parties in judicial or related proceedings; giving legal advice and preparing legal documents or instruments in non-contentious matters; presiding over or participating in tribunals of a legal or quasi-legal character; representing the state in matters of a legal or quasi-legal nature; etc.

The often large body of professionals, who are the product of such a system of education, invariably necessitates the establishment of governing bodies; the enactment of regulatory legislation; the adoption of controlling practices; the fostering of certain norms and mores of professional culture; etc.

The Kwandu are an agro-pastoral people of about 2,000 persons who inhabit the area of semi-desert around the Serra da Neve near the MoÇamedes Desert. Kwandu law has largely evolved in the context of a particular notion of time held by this people for whom the past is alive in the present and history interacts with events of the moment. Among the Kwandu the past is one of the main subjects of daily conversation, a vital component of their oral traditions as well as an enduring feature of their re-enactment of the lives of ancestors, of religious ritual and of the symbolic and value-systems of the group. This study brings together data collected in 1970 and 1971 when I lived for fourteen months with the Kwandu. During this period I shared their daily lives and spent many hours listening to the telling and re-telling of past events, gaining, in the process, an insight into their way of thinking and feeling, the essential key to an understanding of their history.

The oral history of the Kwandu is permeated by a concept of time which demands the constant revival and re-enactment of the past. Whenever a narrator evokes an ancestor he becomes that ancestor and transposes himself to the time of action to confront and re-live the events of the past. In this way all narratives, including many which go back several centuries to the most remote events in the collective memory, are recounted in detail, in the first person and in the present tense.

Security challenges have continued to trouble governments internationally. From the Islamic State terrorists in the Gulf region, to the murderous activities of Boko Haram and “herdsmen” in Nigeria in recent times, it has become imperative for those entrusted with maintaining security to redefine the conditions of national security. In this context, it is now conventional for various governments in Nigeria to appropriate enormous amounts of money in their budgets for “national security” (“tagged security vote”). This article explores the emergence, configuration, constitutionality and abuses of security votes in Nigeria. It also explores the appropriation and expenditure of security funds in the USA and attempts to draw lessons from this jurisdiction. It argues that there is a robust connection between security votes and corruption and, thus, attempts to identify legal structures for preventing the misspending and embezzlement of public funds (security votes) in the country's monetary appropriation and expenditure.

While for-profit companies regularly embark on non-profit activities, the converse issue has recently come to attention, namely whether non-profit companies may embark on profit-making activities. This has given rise to a confusing conundrum of practical importance, not only in South Africa but also in other jurisdictions. This article discusses whether non-profit companies, under the South African Companies Act of 2008, may have purely commercial objects. It also addresses the intertwined question of the contours of permissible profit-making activities. Since the non-profit company is the modern successor to the section 21 company under the previous Companies Act of 1973, this article considers the recent case of Cuninghame v First Ready Development 249, in which the Supreme Court of Appeal was faced with the problem of a section 21 company with a commercial object. The article also explores the administration of rental pool agreements by non-profit companies, which arose in the Cuninghame case.

The recent global financial crisis has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of traditional regulation in averting financial crime. Consequently the supervision of financial institutions has been increasingly re-evaluated and such endeavours have resulted in the reregulation of the sector in many jurisdictions. This article argues that, much as these strategies can be said to be laudable, until they emphasize engagement with the people who work in those institutions through making it possible for them to report corporate misconduct, these legislative paradigms will not avail much. As such, this article argues for the increased use of insiders through whistleblowing as a mechanism to support the exposure of illegal activities. By comparing the whistleblowing approaches adopted in South Africa and Switzerland, this article attempts to contribute to the standardization of approaches that can be used to enhance global financial sector transparency and minimize financial crime.

In 1961 Tony Allott, then a rather young elder statesman of African law, helped to foster my interest in that subject, and my subsequent work in Ethiopia. He and several other distinguished colleagues in London also encouraged other American initiatives to assist the development of legal education and research in Africa, efforts which began in 1962, burgeoned during the ensuing decade, and then withered rapidly.

The activities of the early 60s helped to generate an extraordinary number of different kinds of projects: the temporary placement of over 150 Americans in law teaching positions in African institutions; a large and wide variety of research and writing; the founding of law reporters, law journals and university institutes of African law, both within Africa and elsewhere; the flow of a substantial number of Africans to graduate legal studies in U.S. and U.K. universities; new kinds of interactions between African, British and American scholars. These activities also contributed to the emergence (notably in North America) of that amorphous, contentious field of scholarship which came to be called “law and development”, and, then, in the latter 70s, to acrimonious critiques and agonising reappraisals of much of all this effort.

Tony Allott participated in, or observed, much of this history, as anyone familiar with his career and bibliography will know. I hope that this brief account of some of these past activities may be of some interest to him, and to others interested in law and social change in Africa.

Legislation in Lesotho concerning marriage has proceeded along unusually haphazard lines. Confusion and difficulty appear to have arisen in the territory as a result of the absence of any legislative foresight, with the result that statute law remains silent on many essential points, and there has been constant failure to consider the position as a whole.

To what extent do the methods of treating criminal offenders in African states require revision ? This question is increasingly under discussion at present. Problems of crime and punishment are changing. To some extent such problems appear in a changed form after the end of the colonial period, when foreign governments have been replaced by representative national governments. The prison, an alien institution in much of Africa, which, moreover, in colonial days may have contained popular political leaders, does not confer on its inmates the stigma which is an important punitive aspect of imprisonment elsewhere.2 Most African governments are seriously concerned to combat crime: partly because many forms of crime are inimical to nation-building and economic development, but partly too from idealistic determinations to cleanse national life.