Conference on the Teaching of Law

Extract

The Ford Foundation generously provided travelling expenses for 12 law teachers from Basutoland, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Rhodesia, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, and Tanzania to attend this four-day conference, together with 30 Nigerian participants. It was an attempt, and a successful one, to bridge the gap between law faculties, which revealed many common problems.

The initial meeting produced much agreement concerning the methods of teaching jurisprudence in Africa, a course which has been in some schools a dull and irrelevant exercise for students. No one disputed the value to African students of the classics of jurisprudence, but it was felt that the course should encompass more than a study of legal philosophies developed in other societies. Law students should be acquainted with the data of sociologists, economists, anthropologists, political scientists, and other specialists who have studied African society, and they should be reminded that the legal philosophy of their country cannot ignore the facts discovered by these other disciplines. This philosophy of law will help to determine, and will be partly determined by, the answers given to to such questions as: What is the role of the judge in the one-party state? Does he make law, interpret it, or simply apply it? Or is he only to find the facts in a dispute ? What is the function of law in economic planning, in state management?