Colonialism

Under the imperialism approach transplanted commercial laws especially from countries receiving these laws from their colonial or other western metropolitan centers are viewed as aimed at securing the immediate and future commercial interests of the colonial/metropolitan empire and not the interests of the peoples of the receiving countries.

This special issue of the International Criminal Law Review particularly welcomes submissions that critically reflect on these questions in the context of transitional justice and resurgent authoritarianism and ongoing conflict.

There is a new struggle for Africa’s market. The contestants include the European Union (EU), United States (US), Russia, India and China. In this blog, I reflect on the new European Union -Africa Comprehensive Strategy proposals. The blog pushes against the Strategy’s revision of the historical relationship between the two regions which is built on embedded inequality. This is because, to be a true partnership, the unequal nature of the relationship between the EU and Africa must be centered. In the contest for its market, Africa has a unique opportunity to harness the competition tactically.

The past three decades have seen a growing scholarship on international law addressing legal and policy discussions on investment, trade, financial services and regulation, intellectual property right, tax, energy, competition law and even the environment. Despite this growth in the teaching and scholarly research of IEL, there remains question over the plurality and diversity of methodologies, voices and viewpoints in the discipline.

Drawing from comparative experiences, it is opined that a systematic academic study of private international law might create the required strong political will and institutional support (which is absent at the moment) that is necessary to give private international law its true place in Africa.

Critical perspectives can be both distinct from and form part of the broadly defined ‘socio-legal’ approach to social inquiry. To adopt a critical perspective is to commit to the project of demystifying and disrupting dominant narratives, interpretations and ways of both knowing and understanding legal phenomena. It represents a quest for truth and offers alternative ways of seeing the world around us. As such, critical perspectives encompass doctrinal, empirical and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of law. In short, it is the purpose of critical approaches to challenge and disrupt that which has been taken to be a ‘given’ in mainstream discourses and narratives

Colonial powers reshaped the economies to extract resources for export to the metropole while creating an import dependency for consumables. This legacy transformed these economies and their indigenous institutions and power. Locals were brutalized and deprived of meaningful economic opportunities.

The Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law (Hamburg) and the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law will host a one-day workshop on decolonial comparative law on 6 October 2020 at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg).

Dr. Amaka Vanni is a legal scholar, consultant and documentary filmmaker. Her work lies at the intersection of international economic law, development, and global governance.

The hallmark of Jonathan Bashi’s masterful analysis of the uniquely multifarious and variegated processes which set Africa apart from all other regional integration theatres (the Americas, Europe, Southeast Asia) is its lucidity. His organising concept of ‘regional developmentalism through law’ as distinct from regionalism per se or regional economic integration is a genial critical and discursive move.  It effectively critiques and corrects the concealed neoliberalism of integrationist discourse by 1) restoring the means-end relationship of regionalism to development, and 2) foregrounding the centrality and polyvalence of law as mechanism. For Bashi, the role of rules is not to serve markets, but to fashion, construct, and condition them.