Treating Law as Knowledge: Telling Colonial Officers What to Say to Africans about Running “Their Own” Native Courts
- 1 January 1992
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Law & Society Review
- Vol. 26 (1) , 11-46
- https://doi.org/10.2307/3053835
Abstract
This article is presented at two levels throughout. On the surface it is a straightforward historical analysis of a directive to British officers in charge of African courts in the late colonial period, with some African data adduced to sketch the local context into which the British were trying to insert new procedures and practices. On a deeper level the article uses the British colonial occasion to explore widely held cultural assumptions in Anglo-American law about the definability of “justice,” the concept of time and timing in legal affairs, and the complex place of the idea of legitimate, authoritative, and permanent “knowledge” in legal institutions.This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Logic of Writing and the Organization of SocietyPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1986
- Outline of a Theory of PracticePublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1977
- African Law Adaptation and DevelopmentPublished by University of California Press ,1965