Customary law and traditional authorities continue to play highly complex and contested roles in contemporary African states. Reversing the common preoccupation with studying the impact of the post/colonial state on customary regimes, this volume analyses how the interactions between state and non-state normative orders have shaped the everyday practices of the state. It argues that, in their daily work, local officials are confronted with a paradox of customary law: operating under politico-legal pluralism and limited state capacity, bureaucrats must often, paradoxically, deal with custom – even though the form and logic of customary rule is not easily compatible and frequently incommensurable with the form and logic of the state – in order to do their work as a state. Given the self-contradictory nature of this endeavour, officials end up processing, rather than solving, this paradox in multiple, inconsistent and piecemeal ways. Assembling inventive case studies on state-driven land reforms in South Africa and Tanzania, the police in Mozambique, witchcraft in southern Sudan, constitutional reform in South Sudan, Guinea’s long durée of changing state engagements with custom, and hybrid political orders in Somaliland, this volume offers important insights into the divergent strategies used by African officials in handling this paradox of customary law and, somehow, getting their work done.

Customary law and so called 'traditional authorities' continue to play vital roles in many African societies today. This book tackles the problem of how the state deals with the paradox of having to integrate customary law and traditional authorities that are based on their own logics of 'law', 'legal process' and 'authority'.

This book is a collection of contributions by leading scholars on theoretical and contemporary problems of militant democracy. The term 'militant democracy' was first coined in 1937. In a militant democracy preventive measures are aimed, at least in practice, at restricting people who would openly contest and challenge democratic institutions and fundamental preconditions of democracy like secularism - even though such persons act within the existing limits of, and rely on the rights offered by, democracy. In the shadow of the current wars on terrorism, which can also involve rights restrictions, the overlapping though distinct problem of militant democracy seems to be lost, notwithstanding its importance for emerging and established democracies. This volume will be of particular significance outside the German-speaking world, since the bulk of the relevant literature on militant democracy is in the German language. The book is of interest to academics in the field of law, political studies and constitutionalism.

This book interrogates the ideology and practices of liberal constitutionalism in the Zambian postcolony. The analysis focuses on the residual political and governmental effects of an imperial form of power, embodied in the person of the republican president, termed here prerogativism. Through systematic, long-term ethnographic engagement with Zambian constitutionalist activists – lawyers, judges and civic leaders – the study examines how prerogativism has shaped the postcolonial political landscape and limited the possibilities of constitutional liberalism. This is revealed in the ways that repeated efforts to reform the constitution have sidelined popular participation and thus failed to address the deep divide between a small elite stratum (from which the constitutional activists are drawn) and the marginalized masses of the population. Along the way, the study documents the intimate interpenetration of political and legal action and examines how prerogativism delimits the political engagements of elite actors. Special attention is given to the reluctance of legal activists to engage with popular politics and to the conservative ethos that undermines efforts to pursue a jurisprudence of transformational constitutionalism in the findings of the Constitutional Court. The work contributes to the rising interest in applying socio-legal analysis to the statutory domain in postcolonial jurisdictions. It offers a pioneering attempt to deconstruct the amorphous and ambivalent assemblage of ideas and practices related to constitutionalism through detailed ethnographic interrogation. It will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners with an interest in theorizing challenges to political liberalism in postcolonial contexts, as well as in rethinking the methodological toolbox of socio-legal analysis.

African legal realities reflect an intertwining of transnational, regional, and local normative frameworks, institutions, and practices that challenge the idea of the sovereign territorial state. This book analyses the novel constellations of governance actors and conditions under which they interact and compete. The work follows a spatial approach as the emphasis on normative spaces opens avenues to better understand power relations, processes of institutionalization, and the production of legitimacy and normativities themselves. Selected case studies from thirteen African countries deliver new empirical data and grounded insights from, and into, particular normative spaces. The individual chapters explore the interrelationships between various normative orders, diverse actors, and their influences. The encounters between different normative understandings and actors open up space and multiple forums for negotiating values. The authors analyse how different doctrines, institutions, and practices are constructed, contested, negotiated, and adapted in translation processes and thereby continuously reshape Africa’s multidimensional normative spaces. The volume delivers nuanced views of jurisprudence in Africa and presents an excellent resource for scholars and students of anthropology, legal geography, legal studies, sociology, political sciences, international relations, African studies, and anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of how legal constellations are shaped by unreflected assumptions about the state and the rule of law.

This comprehensive Encyclopedia is an indispensable resource in the area of law and development. Bringing together more than 80 entries, the Encyclopedia spans a variety of approaches, contextualised histories, recent developments and forward-looking insights into the role of law in development. It is an invaluable reference point for scholars seeking to engage with issues at the intersection of law and development from both within and outside of the legal field, as well as a thorough but succinct overview for post-graduate students.

Comparative law is a common subject-matter of research and teaching in many universities around the world, and the twenty-first century has aptly been termed 'the era of comparative law'. This Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Law presents a truly global perspective of comparative law today. The contributors are drawn from all parts of the world to provide different perspectives on how we understand the 'law' and how it operates in practice. In substance, the Handbook contains 36 chapters covering a broad range of topics, divided under the following headings: 'Methods of Comparative Law' (Part I), 'Legal Families and Geographical Comparisons' (Part II), 'Central Themes in Comparative Law' (Part III); and 'Comparative Law beyond the State' (Part IV).