A New Jurisprudence for Africa

Abstract

In this essay, the author argues that, despite the adoption of new rights-friendly constitutions in Africa's emerging democracies, an old jurisprudence of executive supremacy, fashioned during the era of authoritarianism (colonial and postcolonial) and characterized by a high degree of deference to state (executive) power and a general skepticism about individual rights, remains highly influential within Africa's common-law judiciaries. There is thus a danger that judicial review and constitutional interpretation would retard, instead of facilitate, progress towards constitutional liberalism in Africa's new democracies.