Peter Slinn

A Fresh Start for Africa? New African Constitutional Perspectives for the 1990s

This seems a particularly appropriate time to devote a double issue of the Journal to one topic-constitutional law. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, there is blowing a wind of political change comparable with that identified by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in his famous speech to the South African parliament in Cape Town on 3 February, 1960. The source of that wind was African national consciousness which

James Read the Law Reporter: The Case Law of the African Commonwealth

In the Introduction to this volume, brief reference was made to James Read’s work as General Editor of Law Reports of the Commonwealth . The series includes cases from every part of the Commonwealth, but the purpose of this brief note is to draw particular attention to some recent cases reported from African jurisdictions, some of which have no up-to-date series of law reports of their own.

Introduction and Report of Proceedings: Perspectives for the 1980s

We cannot discuss international law and its possible evolution towards a new international law of development without briefly reminding ourselves of what law is and how it emerges. What makes law, in other words? Law, a legal system, first of all presupposes a community . In the international case this is a community of autonomous states. Next—to achieve an effective system—there must be consensus on both the means and the ends of regulation of relations within that community or an authority with power to execute the rules of that system. At the end of the day the international community has depended, and continues to depend, on a blend of consensus and authority. Next, there must be structure , an organised network of institutions for the determination of rules (“sources”), for the resolution of conflicts and for the carrying into effect of decisions on those rules and conflicts. Thus law cannot exist without purpose ; the law embodies goals which may be limited or extensive in their reach—the law is for something, some end. Lastly, of course, there must be rules which specify how the system is to work, and the actual content of the relations prescribed. In the evolution which we have witnessed since the Second World War international law has moved in all these respects; and this movement is quite vital for the theme of international law and development.