International Journal of Constitutional Law Advance Access originally published online on October 8, 2009
International Journal of Constitutional Law 2009 7(4):654-682; doi:10.1093/icon/mop027
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The judiciary and political change in Africa: Developing transitional jurisprudence in Nigeria
* Lecturer, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast; senior research fellow and director, Sustainable Democracy Programme, Centre for African Resources Research and Development (CARRD), Leicester, UK. I would like to thank Emilios Christodoulidis for comments on an earlier version of this article. I am also very grateful to an anonymous peer reviewer of I•CON for incisive comments and suggestions in the review process. Thanks also to Karen Barrett for her editorial assistance. The usual caveats apply. Email: h.yusuf{at}qub.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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At a time of increased evaluations of law, human rights, and the rise of judicial power all over the globe, the work of most African judiciaries and the principles of the jurisprudence they espouse in promoting social justice remain an unlikely focus of comparative legal scholarship. This ought not to be so in view of the considerable activities of the courts on the continent in the dawn of the third wave of democratization. This article explores the work of the Nigerian Supreme Court in the political transition to democracy since 1999. Utilizing insights from the work of Ruti Teitel, it attempts to outline some of the major constitutional and extraconstitutional principles adopted by the Court in mediating intergovernmental contestations in the turbulent transition away from almost three decades of authoritarian military rule. It emerges that the task of fostering social transformation through the "weakest" branch seriously tasks the institutional integrity of the judiciary.