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Recent Trends in Law Reform in Sierra Leone
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Tony Allott made a breakthrough in legal scholarship when he opted out of the English Legal System familiar from his Oxford training for a legal virgin soil in a continent that was still a barren field for legal literature, at any rate on its West and East Coasts then forming part of the British Colonial Empire. He embarked on research first into the land law of the then Gold Coast and later spread his untiring zeal into other areas of the laws of dependencies in the Sub-Saharan Region. His sustained energy maintained the same momentum through independent Africa. He examined aspects of the legal systems of many countries within the region ranging over matters such as the constitution, the family and the land; he propounded his ideas first in lectures, then in articles for journals and at symposia, compiling some of them in the Essays, and he finally reflected philosophically on his own concept of law in The Limits of Law.
Professor Allott can be described as a pioneer in the study and research of African Law as an academic discipline. That he succeeded Colonial Administrative Officers is a moot point but it is submitted that the effort of his predecessors was geared towards gaining a knowledge of the ways, the customs and lives of the peoples whom they governed and they were not motivated by a scientific urge for the discovery of organized legal systems because to many, if not all, Africa was a continent so dark that it was inconceivable for law to exist within it.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Journal of African Law , Volume 31 , Issue 1-2: Essays in Honour of A. N. Allott , Spring 1987 , pp. 136 - 150
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1987
References
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