This paper is concerned mainly with the situation arising from the recognition of African customary law in the three largest of the East African territories administered under the authority of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom—viz. Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. It will not be necessary, for the present purpose, to take any account of differences in constitutional status between the territories concerned.

“A social anthropological approach to property as a social institution leads us to the position where we look upon inheritance not as ‘the entrance of living persons into the possession of dead persons’ property’ (a) or even as ‘succession to all rights of the deceased’ (b) but rather as the transference of statuses from the dead to the living with respect to specific property objects.”2 A man holds many statuses each of which probably gives rights and duties in respect of property; on his death these statuses do not necessarily pass to a single individual—they may well pass individually to a number of persons each of whom succeeds to the rights and duties of the particular status which has passed to him. The status may be transferred or may even disappear. If we analyse the Yoruba customary rules of succession in this manner we shall, I believe, be able to dispel some of the confusion which surrounds the concept of ‘family property’, with its attendant problems—the respective rights of sons and brothers to the deceased's property, the rights of daughters to inherit, the rights attaching to individual and family or inherited property, the distinction between movable and immovable property, the rights over individually held houses or cocoa farms situated on family land.

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.

Eritrea is a territory of about 46,000 sq. miles on the western shore of the Red Sea. It is bounded on the south by Ethiopia, on the north and west by the Sudan, and on the south east by French Somaliland. Its one million inhabitants are divided almost equally between Coptic Christians and Moslems, with a few Europeans, mostly Italians. Eritrea was an Italian colony from 1890 to the 1947 peace treaty which ended World War II, under which Italy renounced all claim to it. The British conquered it in 1941, and administered it until 15th September, 1952, when it became federated with Ethiopia as an autonomous unit, pursuant to a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, passed 2nd December, 1950.2 Eritrea today resembles an American state, with jurisdiction over its local laws, including customary law.

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.

It is axiomatic that in colonial constitutional development events move more swiftly each year in response to ever-increasing pressures. Major changes made or proposed during 1958 for dependent territories in Africa reflect considerable ingenuity and variety of approach: in order to indicate them in outline, it will be necessary to be consecutive only in a geographical sense.

“The land is family land—he may not sell it”; “the land is our family land—it does not belong to the chiefs”. How often such statements are heard in West African courts and how difficult it is to distinguish the rights claimed by the individual, the family and the community. To resolve this difficulty is the task which Dr. G. B. A. Coker has set himself in his recently published book Family Property among the Yorubas.2 In this contribution to the rapidly growing number of books on African law the author writes of a single people—the Yoruba of Western Nigeria, and of a single topic—family property; this is no light task, for the study of the concept of family property is the study of the social and political structure of the people as expressed in their land tenure.

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.