Restructuring Colonial Justice, Empowering the High Court, 1959–1964

Abstract

This chapter analyses how Tanganyika’s first (1961) and second (1962) constitutions gave the judiciary a greater degree of independence from the executive than it had during colonial rule. Once the constitutional framework was in place, the government worked to unify the colonial court systems and replaced the lower courts with a new system of magistrates’ courts under the jurisdiction of the High Court. This chapter illustrates how the unification of the dual court systems gave Africans access to the Court denied to them during British rule and restored the jurisdiction the Court lost in 1929. Unification of the court systems also enhanced the status of the High Court and empowered its judges by giving them supervision over a professionalised magistracy and removing judicial powers from administrators.