A Deep Dive on Pertinent Issues beneath Supremacy of Community Law: Special Reference to the East African Community

Abstract

This paper seeks to address issues surrounding applicability of community/regional/supranational law at national level by East African partner states. By practice regional integration initiatives results into laws that bind partner states and individuals as well. It is these laws that regulate the relationship between the states, institutions and individuals in the regional block so created. In this regard legal issues do arise in the implementations of these laws. This paper will make a discussion on these issues, namely; the principles of sovereignty, supranationality and international legal personality, which must be outlined in the constitutive instruments of any regional community. These principles create the environment for proper implementation and application of community law in national courts if they are very well articulated in the community’s constitutive instrument. It is these principles that gives validity to community law, and makes the law supreme, autonomous directly applicable and effective in national court of partner states.