This article discusses the legal regimes for enforcing foreign arbitral awards within the East African Community (EAC). It focuses specifically on the enforcement of awards from partner states as well as from the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), which, although a supranational court, has jurisdiction to accept parties’ designation to act as an arbitral tribunal. The EAC has not yet developed a supranational community law based regime for enforcing foreign arbitral awards. The current dominant regime for enforcing such awards is the New York Convention. The article examines how the convention has been applied in the partner states and discusses aspects of the existing jurisprudence that demand reconsideration. It examines the suitability of applying the convention regime to awards from the EACJ, and the case for harmonizing the legal regimes for enforcing foreign arbitral awards within the EAC.

The retention and use of the death penalty, especially the mandatory death penalty, continues to be an issue of controversy and concern in Africa and elsewhere. Accordingly, African states are slowly but increasingly moving away from the death penalty, with many of them abolishing it either de facto or de jure, or limiting its use, with some finding its mandatory application to be unlawful. This article considers the recent Supreme Court of Kenya decision that declared the mandatory nature of the death penalty as provided for under the country's Penal Code to be unconstitutional. However, it argues that, while declaring the mandatory death penalty to be unconstitutional is commendable and a promising step on the path towards the abolition of the death penalty, the death penalty remains available as a punishment, with serious human rights implications if procedural safeguards are not followed.

Now that it has been in operation for 20 years, it is necessary to reflect on the impact the South African Domestic Violence Act has had on women's lives. This article analyses this key legislation and the police's duty to ensure its proper implementation. It focuses on the reports of the Independent Complaints Directorate and Civilian Secretariat of Police, the bodies responsible for measuring police compliance with the act. The reports identify serious transgressions, highlighting the police's perception that domestic violence is a private affair with which it should not interfere. This perception plays a particularly subtle and destructive role in legitimizing, supporting and permitting violence against women. In focusing on key court decisions in which the state (police) was held financially accountable for the failure to protect women against violence, the author highlights the importance of challenging the social and legal understanding of women's experiences with violence in promoting a system that takes account of those experiences.

With a view to showing that courts do not have the power to validate native law and custom, this article highlights the different roles assigned to the assent of the people governed by native law and custom, and to the court called upon to determine its judicial enforceability. It argues that customary law is validated by the assent of the people and not by courts, and that the tests contained in different statutes by which courts are permitted to intervene in the regime of customary law are tests of enforceability and not tests of validity. As a result, it argues that the term “validity test” is misleading when used in relation to the power of courts to determine the enforceability of native law and custom, and should therefore be discarded.

This article demonstrates how the application of the ordinary rules of property law in the determination of the property rights of spouses in Nigeria has been unfair to a financially weaker spouse (usually the wife). It calls for reconsideration of the present matrimonial property rights arrangement between a husband and a wife in Nigeria. It argues in favour of the statutory introduction of the concept of “matrimonial property” in Nigeria to apply both during marriage and at divorce. To give some background, reference is made to the South African matrimonial property system of community of property and the accrual system. The article proposes that a special category of property, known as “matrimonial property” and which emphasizes the equal proprietary rights of spouses, is recognized.

This article highlights that section 76(4)(a) of South Africa's Companies Act, which reflects the business judgment rule (BJR) concept, is a standard of review, providing a means of determining whether a director has met his or her undertakings under section 76(3). The article suggests that section 76 should be titled “Standards of conduct and review” instead of referring only to standards of conduct. It draws a clear distinction between standards of conduct (including the personal financial interests disclosure requirements) on one hand, and a standard of review on the other. After tracing the traditional international requirements of BJR, the article analyses the decision-making requirements under section 76(4)(a). It concludes that, while section 76(4)(a) compares favourably with US and Australian laws, the omission of a good faith requirement is unfortunate since that is a critical component of decision-making. The article proposes that good faith and proper purpose under section 76(3)(a) should form part of the section 76(4)(a) requirements.