Ancillary Issues Research Articles

Breaking the Ceiling Glass: Illegality of Mandatory Requirement for Police Report - Clearance for Medical Emergence Treatments by Health Providers in Nigeria

The National Health Act, 2014 is the first national legal framework that specifically deals with the right to health in Nigeria and other ancillary issues. Notwithstanding the provisions of the Act recognising and guaranteeing right to health in Nigeria, it is riddled with lacuna and deficiencies therein that constitute legal issues on right to health in the country. For instance, Section 20 (1) of the National Health Act, 2014 provides that a health care provider, health worker or health establishment shall not refuse a person emergency medical treatment for any reason. Regrettably, notwithstanding this provision of the Act, victims of accident or persons that have gunshots injuries and who need urgent medical attentions are being refused emergency medical treatment and rejected when taken to the hospitals on the ground that they are unable to provide the Police Report/Clearance. This paper submits that this practice is a flagrant violation of the provision of the National Health Act, 2014 which provides that no person should be refused emergency medical treatment for any reason. The paper submits further there is nothing in the National Health Act or any other law whatsoever in Nigeria that provides that a Police Report/Clearance must be produced before a victim of accidents or gunshots could be treated by the health care providers.

Characterizing the chemical and microbial fingerprint of unsheltered homelessness in an urban watershed

Unsheltered homelessness is rapidly becoming a critical issue in many cities worldwide. The worsening situation not only highlights the socioeconomic plight, but it also raises awareness of ancillary issues such as the potential implications for urban water quality. The objective of this study was to simultaneously leverage diverse source tracking tools to develop a chemical and microbial fingerprint describing the relative contribution of direct human inputs into Las Vegas' tributary washes. By evaluating a wide range of urban water matrices using general water quality parameters, fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), human-associated microbial markers [e.g., HF183, crAssphage, and pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV)], 16S rRNA gene sequencing data, and concentrations of 52 anthropogenic trace organic compounds (TOrCs), this study was able to differentiate principal sources of these constituents, including contributions from unsheltered homelessness. For example, HF183 (31% vs. 0%), crAssphage (61% vs. 5%), and PMMoV (72% vs. 55%) were more frequently detected in tributary washes with higher homeless census counts vs. ‘control’ tributary washes. Illicit drugs or their metabolites (e.g., heroin, acetylmorphine, amphetamine, and cocaine) and select TOrCs (e.g., acetaminophen, caffeine, ibuprofen, and naproxen) were also detected more frequently and at higher concentrations in the more anthropogenically-impacted washes. These data can be used to raise awareness of the shared interests between the broader community and those who are experiencing homelessness, notably the importance of protecting environmental health and water quality. Ultimately, this may lead to more rapid adoption of proven strategies for achieving functional zero homelessness, or at least additional resources for unsheltered individuals.

Intellectual Freedom Manual, 10th ed. Comp. the Office for Intellectual Freedom. Martin Garnar and Trina Magi, eds. Chicago, IL: American Library Association, 2021. 352p. Paper, $69.99 ($62.99 ALA members) (ISBN 9780838948187).

Intellectual freedom (IF), the freedom to seek and obtain information across viewpoints, is a long-supported ethical cornerstone of librarianship. Supporting intellectual freedom within libraries is widely seen as a vital underpinning to democracy. This newest edition of the IFM, like former editions, recounts and explicates the history of intellectual freedom within the profession. Comprising 16 sections (over three parts), the updated edition includes 17 essays by such renowned IF scholars as Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Theresa Chmara, Kristin Pekoll, Helen R. Adams, and others. As such, the IFM remains the authoritative reference work on this subject and makes a strong case for why intellectual freedom matters while giving practical advice on how to support intellectual freedom within the library. This edition also continues the IFM’ s tradition of evolving and adapting topics in response to the evolution of libraries and librarianship. Accordingly, some valuable ancillary issues are included for discussion, while other information has been taken out or added. Copyright is a wise inclusion carried over from the 9th edition, but now gone is the “Deeper Look” specifically dealing with privacy concerns and RFID. The section dealing with “Meeting Rooms, Exhibit Spaces, Programming, and Education” has also been expanded on from the 9th edition. A particularly useful addition is section 10 (in the second part), entitled “Special Lenses: Guidance across Issues.” This section includes chapters on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Intellectual Freedom for Academic Libraries, Politics, Religion, Free Expression, and the Visual and Performing Arts. Though such a section may seem to be a bit of a hodge-podge, the effect is rather that any questions or uncertainties on the part of the reader have been anticipated and addressed. This foresight regarding readers’ potential anxieties is one of the IFM’ s major strengths. Ample resources to learn more about an issue are provided throughout the IFM , including the ALA core intellectual freedom documents such as the Library Bill of Rights and the Code of Ethics as well as official ALA policy statements and advice on creating intellectual freedom policies for libraries. In addition, references to further resources are found throughout the manual. Indeed, the IFM is a complete examination of intellectual freedom from multiple angles.

POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF DECLARING CIVIL AND CUSTOMARY MARRIAGES VOID

The consequences of declaring a civil marriage entered into during the existence of a customary marriage or vice versa void could have nowhere been fully canvassed. On the face of it, it merely calls for a declaration of invalidity of the existing marriage, but it raises various ancillary issues which have not been addressed. We do not discuss the judgments declaring marriages void, but focus on the consequences of such judgments. For a variety of reasons it is important to determine whether a civil marriage, concluded subsequent to a customary marriage, is valid or ab initio void, or vice versa. To mention but one reason: “Where immovable property, a real right in immovable property, a bond or a notarial bond – (d) is registered in the name of a person who on the date of the registrationwas a party to a marriage governed by the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, 1998 (Act 120 of 1998) the registrar shall on the written application by the person concerned and on the submission of the deed in question and of proof of the relevant facts,endorse the change in status or make a note of the effect that the said person is a party to a marriage in community of property, as the case may be” (S 17(4) of the Deeds Registries Act 47 of 1937). When a marriage is void, no consequences flow from it, except in so far as it may be deemed to be a putative marriage. Lawyers, officials and the public at large still do not seem to realize that interms of sections 2(1) and (2) of the Recognition of Customary Marriage Act (120 of 1998) customary marriages entered into before and after commencement of the Act are for all purposes recognized as marriages. The case of Netshituka v Netshituka (426/10 [2011] ZACSA 120 dated 2011-07-20) has now given clear direction as to the validity or non-validity of civil marriages concluded after the Marriage and Matrimonial Property Law Amendment Act 3 of 1988. Also in Thembisile v Thembisile (2002 (2) SA 209 (T) par 32) Bertelsmann J held that a civil marriage contracted while the man was a partner in an existing customary marriage with another woman was void. The position of the validity of civil marriages, entered into prior to and after the said Amendment Act, will now be discussed.

Preliminary project design for insect production: part 4 – facility considerations

At the end of the preliminary project design (PPD) phase an aspiring entopreneur should have a clear idea of the scope and scale of the project being proposed. Hence, during PPD a number of aspects of the facilities must be considered. These are here dealt with in terms of basic questions that should first be answered about the project as a whole; project location issues; to what degree the facility is to be integrated or segregated into different units; what functionality is to be housed within the various building envelopes; and how safety and hygiene concerns can be addressed. As well, three ancillary issues are discussed that may affect facility design, construction and operation: the development of new production organisms that can grow on low-cost feeds; the possibility of disease evolution; and the matter of animal welfare.

Bhamaha's Kavyalamkara: A Critical Study of Poetry, Poetics and their Ancillary Issues

Finding out the criterion of good poetry and nature of aesthetic delight leads one to think questions such as: What is poetry? What constitutes its body? What is definition of poetry? What is its purpose and what is the nature of delight it imparts to the sympathetic reader? What constitutes the difference between ordinary conversational speech and scientific speech? What are the essential qualities that a poet should possess? Sanskrit literary criticism bears witness to endeavours to arrive at a satisfactory solution to these problems where in Bharata's Natyashashtra is the first available critique on aural-visual arts and aesthetic pleasure related to it. He also gives the requisites of Kavya, ten gunas, ten doshas and four alamkaras. But his treatment of poetry is considered as a factor auxiliary to drama.

Reflecting on a Multi-Perspective Approach to Teaching and Learning about Police Shootings

This reflective essay highlights the importance of project structure when teaching highly controversial topics. I review research that shows differing approaches to teaching highly controversial subjects and the impact of the approaches on learning outcomes. I then reflect on the outcomes of deploying a non-directive, peacekeeping approach to address the issue of police-involved shootings in a criminal justice class. Finally, I draw attention to ancillary issues that emerge in this project structure as well as how the results impacted my own thinking about this topic.

Crimination and Solution of Criminal Matters in the Criminal Proceedings of Bosnia and Herzegovina - a Division Between Normative and Actual

In this paper, the central part presents the solution of the criminal-procedural task, that is, the clarification and solution of a specific criminal matter in criminal proceedings of Bosnia and Herzegovina by criminal-law entities, with special attention to restrictive legal conditions of a criminal-procedural nature, as well as certain problems and dilemmas of a practical nature. The extremely dynamic development of modern criminal procedural law in the last two decades is also characterized by the adoption of new criminal procedural solutions with a pronounced tendency of humanization, which directly relates to the catalog of the rights of the suspect or accused person. In order to understand the nature of the criminal proceedings, the conceptual determination and differentiation of the criminal matter as the main subject of the criminal proceedings was made to the criminal matter in an unfair and fair sense, with reference to the practical aspect of the efficient conduct of the criminal proceedings and the illumination and settlement of the criminal matter, respecting the standards of proof. Given the nature of the criminal proceedings, in addition to the criminal matter as the main case, other secondary or ancillary issues are included which do not constitute a criminal offense but relate to the criminal matter (property claim, so-called prejudicial or preliminary issues and costs of the proceedings).

TurboPy: A lightweight python framework for computational physics

Computational physics problems often have a common set of aspects to them that any particular numerical code will have to address. Because these aspects are common to many problems, having a framework already designed and ready to use will not only speed the development of new codes, but also enhance compatibility between codes.Some of the most common aspects of computational physics problems are: a grid, a clock which tracks the flow of the simulation, and a set of models describing the dynamics of various quantities on the grid. Having a framework that could deal with these basic aspects of the simulation in a common way could provide great value to computational scientists by solving various numerical and class design issues that routinely arise.This paper describes the newly developed computational framework that we have built for rapidly prototyping new physics codes. This framework, called turboPy, is a lightweight physics modeling framework based on the design of the particle-in-cell code turboWAVE. It implements a class (called Simulation) which drives the simulation and manages communication between physics modules, a class (called PhysicsModule) which handles the details of the dynamics of the various parts of the problem, and some additional classes such as a Grid class and a Diagnostic class to handle various ancillary issues that commonly arise. Program summaryProgram Title: TurboPyCPC Library link to program files:http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/rznn6s5myw.1Developer’s repository link:https://github.com/NRL-Plasma-Physics-Division/turbopyLicensing provisions: CC0 1.0Programming language: PythonNature of problem: Many computation physics problems have a common set of aspects to them that are often addressed in a custom way in every different code, which leads to lengthy and redundant development and testing, as well as introducing roadblocks to interoperability.Solution method: Implement a set of python classes as a lightweight framework that deals with these common problems, so that development time on new computational physics codes is reduced, and interoperability and reusability are increased.

The community health worker as service extender, cultural broker and social change agent: a critical interpretive synthesis of roles, intent and accountability

This paper is a critical interpretive synthesis of community health workers (CHWs) and accountability in low-income and middle-income countries. The guiding questions were: What factors promote or undermine CHWs as...

Remote Sensing of Nepal’s Forests and Trees: Ascertaining the Front Line of Human-Induced Tree Cover Change

Synoptic, remote sensing of the national-scale, societal response of trees and forests to human driving forces in Nepal has been a wicked problem. This problem is a complex of four ancillary issues, namely, minimum mapping unit, radiometric scatter due to terrain, modeling of human dimensions, and democratizing robust environmental analysis. Beginning with the November 2018 conference convened by the East-West Center (EWC), USA, in Nepal, the state-of-the-art and key works in this problem-solving has been reviewed in this paper. Though this technology has improved the detection of forest and tree changes due to human driving forces at earlier stages, it is still not robust enough to inform global and national policy.

Optimal Surveillance Strategies After Surgery for Renal Cell Carcinoma.

One in 5 patients who undergo surgical resection for clinically localized renal cell carcinoma (RCC) develop local and/or distant recurrences which, when detected early, may be amenable to salvage local and systemic therapies. When considering that approximately half of these recurrences will occur during the first 2 years, a clear rationale exists for optimizing surveillance strategies after surgery. Although there is a notable dearth of high-quality data on this subject, clinical principles can guide clinicians as they attempt to balance the burden of surveillance strategies with potential clinical benefit. The objective of this review is to summarize the evidence regarding optimal surveillance protocols after surgery for RCC. We provide an overview of the rationale supporting surveillance after surgery, a summary of the American Urological Association and NCCN guidelines, reasons against routine long-term surveillance, surveillance costs, and ancillary issues, such as the utility of bone scan, PET/CT scan, and surveillance after thermoablation.

The influence of bedding-parallel fractures in hydraulic fracture containment

The Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale Formation in the Appalachian Basin, which encompasses more than 3.3 trillion tonnes of organic matter, has low permeability (0.1 to 10 μd) and requires extensive fracture stimulation before the reservoir will yield gas in commercial volumes (de Witt, 1986). Since 2004, the application of horizontal drilling, combined with multi-staged hydraulic fracturing to create permeable flow paths from the shale units into wellbores, has resulted in a drilling boom for the Marcellus Formation (Engelder et al., 2009). These lateral wells are usually completed from the toe to the heel over a number of stages using a plug-and-perf method, or if a multiple well pad is being stimulated, after a zipper-frac style (Baig, et al., 2012). Effective hydraulic fracturing in unconventional shale reservoirs requires an understanding of the pre-existing discontinuities (impermeable/not effectively connected natural fractures) state and an assessment of whether at any point of the stimulation it is energetically favourable to move fluids within the reservoir. The dynamic nature of the local stress regime owing to hydraulic fracturing leads to stimulation of different fracture sets which could include bedding-parallel fractures and bedding planes. Describing the progression of the fracturing into the formation and ancillary issues of how far into the reservoir the rock has been stimulated and the stimulation containment provides the opportunity for operators to potentially control fracture behaviour and improve completion designs.

Indian Arbitration: The Ghost of Implied Exclusion and other Related Issues

The purpose of this article is to examine the effect of the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 on the scope and applicability of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. In 2015, several provisions of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 were amended by the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 based on the recommendations of the Law Commission of India in its 246th Report. Among other things, a proviso was inserted to section 2(2) of the 1996 Act to empower Indian courts to act in aid of foreign-seated international commercial arbitrations. So, pursuant to the amendment, Indian courts can aid foreign-seated arbitral tribunals in taking of evidence or grant interim measures in favour of such arbitrations if the resulting award is enforceable under the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Awards or Convention on Execution of Foreign Arbitral Awards in India. The Law Commission of India had recommended that such remedies available under the proviso to section 2(2) could be excluded only by an ‘express’ agreement between the parties. However, in the present form, the proviso to section 2(2) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 provides that the aforesaid remedies could be excluded by an ‘express’ and ‘implied’ agreement between the parties. The author highlights the various problems that may arise as a result of such remedies being made excludable by an ‘implied agreement’ between the parties in light of the ‘theory of implied exclusion’ propounded by the judgment of the Supreme Court of India in Bhatia International v Bulk Trading SA. The author also deals with other ancillary issues arising from such an amendment to section 2(2) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996.

Updates in the Pathologic Diagnosis and Classification of Epithelial Neoplasms of Urachal Origin.

Since the publication of the World Health Organization "blue book" in 2004, several recent studies have provided new insights on the pathologic aspects of urachal neoplasms. The proposed updates include modified criteria for the diagnosis of urachal carcinoma. A uniform nomenclature for cystic tumors was lacking, and it is recommended that urachal mucinous cystic tumors should be separated and classified in a manner similar to ovarian mucinous neoplasms. The spectrum includes mucinous cystadenoma, mucinous cystic tumor of low malignant potential, mucinous cystic tumor of low malignant potential with intraepithelial carcinoma, and microscopically or frankly invasive mucinous cystadenocarcinoma, with 65% of cystic tumors classified as mucinous cystic tumor of low malignant potential. Most importantly, it has been shown that progression-free survival of noninvasive mucinous cystic tumors is significantly better than noncystic invasive adenocarcinoma. This development, along with prior descriptions of urachal villous adenoma, has also reaffirmed the occurrence of benign tumors of urachal epithelial origin. For noncystic (usual) invasive adenocarcinomas, the traditionally described histologic subtypes of enteric, mucinous, signet ring cell, not otherwise specified, and mixed remain appropriate, with 50% of tumors classified as mucinous subtype. Although this subtyping is helpful in diagnosis and differential diagnosis, the clinical significance of subtyping adenocarcinoma is still uncertain. Rare nonglandular morphologies such as urothelial, squamous, and neuroendocrine carcinoma in urachal carcinomas have been described in detail with proposals for their own set of diagnostic criteria. These criteria are based on unique features of urachal nonglandular carcinomas. Among the immunomarkers studied, only β-catenin and CK7 may be of help in the distinction of urachal from colorectal adenocarcinoma. Awareness of the expression profile of immunomarkers such as CDX2, P504S (racemase), PSMA, claudin-18, and REG IV in urachal tumors and in tumors in the differential diagnosis is important to avoid overreliance of these markers in the diagnosis. Limited studies have identified KRAS mutations interestingly only in mucinous adenocarcinoma and exclusive of MSI loss, and mutations in BRAF are not present. Several alternative tumor staging approaches (eg, Mayo, Ontario, TNM systems) different from the traditional staging proposed by Sheldon are used that provide better tumor distribution across stages; however, the prognostic utility of the stage substratification has yet to be validated in large prospective studies. Evidence though suggests that staging urachal cancer is most pertinent when dichotomized to tumors that have spread outside versus within the perivesical tissue. Only high tumor stage and residual tumor after surgery have been shown to be independent predictors of outcome. This review updates the contemporary classification of urachal epithelial tumors, which has informed the upcoming 2016 classification of World Health Organization tumors. We provide modified criteria for diagnosing urachal adenocarcinomas, which remains a clinico-pathologic exercise. The role of ancillary diagnostic methodology and issues pertaining to staging and prognostication are presented.

External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach by Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Florian Schäfer

Reviewed by: External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach by Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Florian Schäfer Malka Rappaport Hovav External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach. By Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Florian Schäfer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 320. ISBN 9780199571949. $115 (Hb). This monograph presents a comprehensive account of transitivity alternations involving the (non)expression of the external argument. It focuses on the causative alternation and both verbal and adjectival passives, drawing principally on data from English, Greek, and German, with reference to literature on other languages where available. Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou, and Schäfer (AA&S) have been responsible for many leading ideas in current analyses of transitivity alternations, and the present volume, couched in the distributive morphology and bare phrase structure frameworks, integrates a wealth of empirical generalizations from decades of literature on these alternations with the authors’ ideas on the syntactic construction of verb meaning. The integration of the cumulative insights from previous literature into a specific theory raises many questions of implementation that are directly addressed in the volume. Other ancillary issues are explored in depth without conclusive answers. The transitivity alternations under discussion are of particular theoretical relevance since they provide fertile ground for fleshing out ideas having to do with the decomposition of verb meaning. Two strands of research have given rise to ideas relating to the syntactic encoding of verb meaning; these merge in the analysis of the transitivity alternations in this book. The first motivation for lexical decomposition developed from observations about systematic relationships between morphologically related classes of words, which share a basic lexical form. The triplet in 1 is illustrative: English and other languages abound in such triplets, though in many languages the forms are distinct and morphologically related. (1) a. The soup is cool. b. The soup cooled. c. The chef cooled the soup. The event descriptions encoded in the sentences in 1 show systematic entailment relations among them and shared selectional restrictions on one of the arguments. These relations are captured by giving the sentences representations with a shared root and common substructures of structurally represented meaning involving primitive predicates such as CAUSE and BECOME. The representation associated with 1c contains that associated with 1b, which also contains that associated with 1a. These ideas can be traced back to the generative semantics literature (McCawley 1968, Lakoff 1970). The second conceptual source for verbal decomposition derives from purported asymmetries between the subject and object of verbs. The verb is claimed to be semantically closer to its internal arguments than its external argument, with the ability to dictate special meanings for its composition with the former but not the latter. These observations give rise to the idea that the subject is not an argument of the verb (later, root) but receives its theta-role from a functional category. This idea dates back at least to Marantz 1984 and was made particularly prominent and given a formal implementation in Kratzer 1996. The two strands of research have merged in approaches that take arguments to be introduced by functional categories which are assigned interpretations similar to those proposed for structures with the primitive predicates (Borer 2005, Pylkkänen 2008, Ramchand 2008, and others). What is traditionally taken to be verb meaning is then portioned out to meaning attributed to the root, sometimes contextually determined, and meaning attributed to the functional categories. Causatives, anticausatives, and adjectival and verbal passives are the perfect testing ground for such theories since they have been argued to be distinguished from one another in terms of the numbers of functional categories and the presence or absence of the external argument and the syntactic nature of its realization. [End Page 471] Ch. 1 introduces the range of data and the basic theoretical issues discussed in the book: the causative alternation, severing the external argument from the verb, the ontological categorization of roots, and the compositional construction of verb meaning. Ch. 2 lays out AA&S’s view that causatives and their anticausative counterparts do not differ in event complexity. This position contrasts with positions that suggest that there are two layers of v in a causative...

ELEMENTS OF LEGACY PROGRAM COMPLEXITY

Researchers in the field of software engineering, business process improvement and information engineering all want to drastically modernize software life-cycle processes and technologies to correct the problems and to improve the quality of software. Research goals have included ancillary issues, such as improving user services through conversion to new platforms and facilitating software processes by adopting automated tools. Automated tools for software development, understanding, maintenance, and documentation add to process maturity, leading to better quality and reliability of computer services and greater customer satisfaction. This paper focuses on critical issues of legacy program improvement. The program improvement needs the estimation of program from various perspectives. The paper highlights various elements of legacy program complexity which further can be taken in account for further program development.

Controlling Radiated Emissions by Design - Third Edition (Mardiguian, M.; 2014) [Book Review

As you would expect from a Third Edition of a book, this volume is well-written, clearly outlined, and a solid contribution to the library of excellent volumes of EMC Engineering. Early in the book, the author makes it clear that he is addressing specifically emissions of electronic products and he will not be sidetracked with ancillary issues off the main topic. The book is approximately 350 pages long; it is divided into 13 chapters with four appendices. It has numerous illustrations, graphs and diagrams. There is sufficient mathematics in the book to clarify key issues relative to radiated fields and the many effects of Maxwell's Equations. I recommend the book for inclusion in an EMC engineer’s library; it has essential material for the beginning engineer, the more experienced engineer, and even an expert EMC engineer.

Innovation Diffusion among Healthcare Workforce: Analysis of Adoption and Use of Medical ICT in Ghanaian Tertiary Hospitals

One of the many notable interventions in the healthcare delivery service in Ghana is the adoption and use of medical technology to different aspects of hospital management especially the integrated Hospital Information Systems. These are comprehensive information support systems (medical sensors, scanners, expert systems, patent record management) implemented in most hospitals to integrate and provide rapid information in respect of patients, clinical, ancillary, legal, financial, service processing and other administrative issues. This research integrates each of the major elements from existing models to predict user acceptance, adoption and use of medical ICT in government hospitals in China and Ghana. Data is collected from a tertiary hospital in Ghana and analysed to evaluate a hierarchy of constraints and stimulants to the adoption and use of Medical ICT in government hospitals in Ghana, determines the extent to which cultural values or others can explain differences in the rate of adoption and use of Medical ICT in government hospitals in developing countries and make policy proposals towards amelioration of the problem of medical ICT adoption and use in government hospitals based on research outcome.

The Legal History of Public Land in Liberia

AbstractThis article demonstrates that there has never been a clear definition of public land in Liberian legal history, although in the past the government operated as if all land that was not under private deed was public. By examining primary source materials found in archives in Liberia and the USA, the article traces the origins of public land in Liberia and its ambiguous development as a legal concept. It also discusses the ancillary issues of public land sale procedures and statutory prices. The conclusions reached have significant implications for the reform of Liberia's land sector.