A History of the Adoption of Codes of Criminal Law and Procedure in British Colonial Africa, 1876–1935

Abstract

This article is a survey of the process whereby codes of criminal law and procedure, having their origin in English law, were introduced into the British colonies and protectorates lying between the Sahara and the Zambesi. Such a survey, covering so large an area and period of time, must needs here be brief, but certain salient points emerge clearly from it. A codified body of criminal law and procedure, replacing the English common law and statutes of general application (as modified piecemeal by local Ordinances), had a great appeal to administrators, government law officers, judges and magistrates, and, whatever their differing views as to the respective merits of codes on the Indian, or more purely English, model, they were virtually all agreed that the introduction of such codes was an essential measure of reform. This is hardly surprising in view of the difficulties experienced by judicial officers, of whom the majority were the lay magistrates of the administrative service, in applying the uncodified English law without an adequate supply of text-books or English law reports.