Search

The uncritical transplantation of English law by Anglophone-African legislators and judges, and their failure to sufficiently adapt English legal concepts to suit the idiosyncratic socioeconomic conditions in Africa, arguably contribute to the perpetuation of English law's hegemony therein. It is argued that the overdependence on English law and courts by African businesses in resolving contractual disputes is not necessarily due to any alleged stellar qualities of the former, but largely due to the over-marketing of the English legal system's competence by its apologists. The analysis uses piquant examples to elicit some adverse effects of using/overreliance on the English law and forum by African businesses in resolving contractual disputes. To reposition from the lengthened shadow of English law, Anglophone African legislators, judges and legal scholars, must craft autochthonous legal processes that suit Africa's tastes and socioeconomic milieu.

The Law Society of England and Wales, as well as English politicians and judges, claim that English (contract) law is admirable, settled and predictable, and non-English legal systems are "laxer systems" whose judges are not as exceptionally knowledgeable as English judges. These claims of legal superiority attract foreign litigants such as African businesspeople to use English laws and forums to resolve their contractual disputes. This article aims to disprove these claims by rigorously assessing them from an Afrocentric lens, as well as from the prediction theory of law, English case law, and rules of contractual interpretation. It finds that English contract law and dispute resolution mechanisms are far from predictable and settled. Also, there is a staggering level of disagreement among English judges regarding their interpretation of commercial contracts. The article exposes the defects of English contract laws to enable foreign businesses to make informed decisions about their choice of laws and forums to resolve their contractual disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law governing credit transactions in India is compartmentalized and concomitantly poses difficulties to contractual parties and access to credit: the overall effect of this is already being felt owing to the country's low rank on the 'getting credit' indicator of the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report 2020. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 (Code), being almost a mirror-image of the English Insolvency Act 1986, has some inherent defects that are incompatible with the local conditions vis-à-vis access to credit and business rescue. Some of these defects arguably emanate from the Code's unfair categorization of creditors into the 'operational' and 'financial' types, and the ensuing confusion as was witnessed in the Supreme Court's Home Buyers' case in 2019. Strangely, financial creditors enjoy some Code-given preferential treatments over operational creditors including the right to constitute committees of creditors in voting and confirming business rescue plans. The insolvency resolution process of the Code is incompatible with the fact that over 90% of the companies doing business in India are SMEs and family-owned. The crushing financial weight of insolvency resolution processes is foreseen to gradually cannibalize these SMEs and cause a sharp rise in the unemployment rate. The article diagnoses a number of defects in the credit and insolvency systems of India, and proposes transplantable solutions from the English system, the U.S. Chapter 11, and Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code.

AFRICA IS A MELTING POT OF DIFFERENT RELIGIONS. Its present day belief systems are a combination of indigenous African religions that were practiced before the colonization of Africa and imported [...]

This article discusses various issues of race and law enforcement in the USA through the lenses of critical race theory and Black radical tradition, precisely to convey the fact that racism is still alive and well in the USA and reverberates through the criminal justice system against Black people. American legal scholars are divided on which legal methodology is most appropriate in addressing racial cum legal issues. However, this article argues that tackling the systemic racism and the perilous proclivity of the police in brutalizing Black people in the USA cannot be adequately achieved through the current (mainstream) frameworks of rule of law and democracy because, arguably, these institutions were erected on the foundations of slavery and racism to principally serve the interests of White Americans. Using legal storytelling, the article narrates specific cases of police brutality and amplifies the voices of critical race theorists that racism in the USA cannot truly be dismantled solely via democratic dialogues and legal formalism as the mainstream view tends to always suggest. It posits that the hefty intellectual effort required to positively bend the mainstream towards realizing the constitutional rights of Black people in the USA can only be shouldered on Black radicalism and 'racial realism', as Derrick Bell, Cedric Robinson, and other scholars have opined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been sufficiently established in law and finance literature that an effective legal framework that governs non-possessory security transactions is a key component in the realization of financial inclusion and affordable access to credit in market economies. Recently, the Nigerian lawmakers enacted the Secured Transactions in Movable Assets Act 2017 (STMA), which was modelled after the United States' Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC Article 9) and its unitary-functional approach to security interests. Arguably, some of the STMA's provisions are defective: they do not reflect the local conditions in Nigeria and are likely to frustrate its section 1 aim of broadening access to credit for individuals and small businesses. The STMA recognizes registration as the main method of perfection: yet there are multiple but unlinked movable collateral registries in Nigeria which ultimately constitute a breeding ground for secret liens. This article argues that the relegation of other perfection methods, such as 'possession' and 'control', will diminish the economic success of the reformed law. It calls for a reconside ration of the rules governing publicity and the perfection of security interests under the STMA with insights and lessons from the UCC Article 9 and its underlying case law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]