[PDF] Towards Customary Legal Empowerment eBook

Author : Janine Ubink
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 35,34 MB
Release : 2011
Category :
ISBN :

GET BOOK

This paper discusses the new donor engagement with customary legal systems and their attempts to overcome a number of negative aspects of such systems so that they function better for marginalized groups in the communities they govern, safeguard human rights, and become more suited to modern day economic structures. Donors display two general approaches for facilitating improvements in customary justice systems: institutional approaches, stimulating linkages between customary and state justice systems, and community-based activities directed at citizens governed by customary justice systems. Institutional approaches struggle to find a careful balance between retaining the informal character, local accessibility and legitimacy of the customary justice system, while at the same time making sufficient change to reform its operation. Community-based activities are less prone to upset this balance as they are unlikely to fundamentally alter the set-up of the customary justice system. Instead, they change its functioning by involving state norms and institutions or by inducing change from within the customary system itself. The distribution of power plays a vital role in improving the functioning of customary justice in both approaches. Bottom-up legal development approaches stress the importance of dealing with the fact that law and power are intrinsically linked, expressing this most clearly through the concept of 'legal empowerment'. Addressing problems in customary justice systems requires a particular kind of legal empowerment - 'Customary Legal Empowerment' - defined as processes that (1) enhance the operation of customary justice systems by improving the representation and participation of marginalized community members and integrating safeguards aimed at protecting the rights and security of marginalized community members and/or (2) improve the ability of marginalized community members to make use of customary justice systems to uphold their rights and obtain outcomes that are fair and equitable.

Author : Thomas McInerney
Publisher :
Page : 185 pages
File Size : 29,98 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Customary law
ISBN : 9788896155066

GET BOOK

"Customary Justice: Perspectives on Legal Empowerment features articles by leading authors, country specialists and practitioners working in the areas of traditional justice and legal empowerment, discusses key aspects of traditional justice, such as for example the rise of customary law in justice sector reform, the effectiveness of hybrid justice systems, access to justice through community courts, customary law and land tenure, land rights and nature conservation, and the analysis of policy proposals for justice reforms based on traditional justice. Discussions are informed by case studies in a number of countries, including Liberia, Eritrea, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and the Peruvian Amazon"--Provided by publisher.

Author : Erica Harper
Publisher :
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 39,63 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Customary law
ISBN : 9788896155059

GET BOOK

"Working with Customary Justice Systems: Post-conflict and Fragile States is a collection of articles from the 'Legal Empowerment and Customary Law Research Grants' program, where seven bursaries were awarded to scholar-practitioners to develop and conduct empirically grounded and evidence-based research programs to evaluate the impact of an empowerment-based initiative involving customary justice. The case studies illustrate that what is effective is situation-specific and contingent upon a variety of factors including, among others, social norms, the presence and strength of a rule of law culture, socioeconomic realities and national and geo-politics"--Provided by publisher.

Author : Sahar Maranlou
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 43,85 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Law
ISBN : 1107072603

GET BOOK

A critical and in-depth analysis of access to justice from international and Islamic perspectives, with a specific focus on access by women.

Author : Gil Loescher
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 100 pages
File Size : 29,99 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780415382984

GET BOOK

First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author : Siri Gloppen
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 26,30 MB
Release : 2004
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780714655680

GET BOOK

Introduction : the accountability function of courts in new democracies / Siri Gloppen, Roberto Gargarella, and Elin Skaar Judicial review in developed democracies / Martin Shapiro How some reflections on the United States' experience may inform African efforts to build court systems and the rule of law / Jennifer Widner The constitutional court and control of presidential extraordinary powers in Colombia / Rodrigo Uprimny The politics of judicial review in Chile in the era of domestic transition, 1990-2002 / Javier A. Couso Legitimating transformation : political resource allocation in the South African constitutional court / Theunis Roux The accountability function of courts in Tanzania and Zambia / Siri Gloppen Renegotiating "law and order" : judicial reform and citizen responses in post-war Guatemala / Rachel Sieder Economic reform and judicial governance in Brazil : balancing independence with accountability / Carlos Santiso In search of a democratic justice what courts should not do : Argentina, 1983-2002 / Roberto Gargarella Lessons learned and the way forward / Irwin P. Stotzky.

Author : Mary Hallward-Driemeier
Publisher : World Bank Publications
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 39,78 MB
Release : 2012-10-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0821395343

GET BOOK

This book provides compelling evidence from 42 Sub-Saharan African countries that gender gaps in legal capacity and property rights need to be addressed in terms of substance, enforcement, awareness, and access if economic opportunities for women in Sub-Saharan Africa are to continue to expand.

Author : Pnina Werbner
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 43,11 MB
Release : 2021-12-29
Category : Law
ISBN : 1000519015

GET BOOK

This book presents an important ethnographic and theoretical advance in legal anthropological scholarship by interrogating customary law, customary courts and legal pluralism in sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights the vitality and continued relevance of customary justice at a time when customary courts have waned or even disappeared in many postcolonial African nations. Taking Botswana as a casestudy from in-depth fieldwork over a fifty-year period, the book shows, the ‘customary’ is robustly enduring, central to settling interpersonal disputes and constitutive of the local as well as the national public ethics. Customary law continues to be constitutionally protected, authorised by the country’s past as an authentic, viable legacy, from the British colonial period of indirect rule to the postcolonial state’s present development as a highly bureaucratised democracy. Along with a theoretical overview of the underlying issues for the anthropology and sociology of law, the book documents customary law as living law in the context of legal pluralism. It takes a legal realist approach and highlights the need to pay close attention to the lived experience of justice and its role in the production of legal subjectivities. The book will be valuable to Africanists but also, more broadly, to social scientists, social historians and socio-legal scholars with interests in law and social change, public ethics and personal morality, and the intersection of politics and judicial decision making.

Author : Dorothy L. Hodgson
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 36,20 MB
Release : 2017-03-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0253025478

GET BOOK

An analysis of the relationships between law, custom, gender, marriage and justice among northern Tanzania’s Maasai communities. When, where, why, and by whom is law used to force desired social change in the name of justice? Why has culture come to be seen as inherently oppressive to women? In this finely crafted book, Dorothy L. Hodgson examines the history of legal ideas and institutions in Tanzania—from customary law to human rights—as specific forms of justice that often reflect elite ideas about gender, culture, and social change. Drawing on evidence from Maasai communities, she explores how the legacies of colonial law-making continue to influence contemporary efforts to create laws, codify marriage, criminalize FGM, and contest land grabs by state officials. Despite the easy dismissal by elites of the priorities and perspectives of grassroots women, she shows how Maasai women have always had powerful ways to confront and challenge injustice, express their priorities, and reveal the limits of rights-based legal ideals. “This is a book that only Dorothy Hodgson could have written, with her decades of work in Tanzania, vast networks in Maasailand, and deep ethnographic knowledge, combined with her deftness in working through more theoretical work on gender and human rights. Closely argued, conceptually sharp, and engagingly written.” —Brett Shadle, author of Girl Cases: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890-1970 “Dorothy Hodgson asks a number of important and clearly articulated questions, and provides thoughtful answers to them using a hybrid of historical and anthropological methodologies that combine in-depth case studies with more empirically-informed macro-level reflection. A concise and useful resource in the undergraduate as well as the graduate classroom.” —Priya Lal, author of African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World “Gender, Justice, and the Problem of Culture makes a significant contribution to the study of law in East Africa and elsewhere among colonized peoples, and it should be required reading not only for academics interested in such matters but for activists and policymakers.” —American Anthropologist “Hodgson’s book is both rich in detail and broad in its implications for understanding struggles for justice for marginalised groups. It deserves the attention of students and scholars of African studies, anthropology, history, political science and women’s and gender studies.” —Journal of Modern African Studies

Author : Thomas Carothers
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 25,6 MB
Release : 2010-03-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 0870032925

GET BOOK

"Over the past decade, Carothers has established himself as the leading U.S. expert on democracy promotion. He is a powerful critic not only of the nuts-and-bolts of democracy assistance but also of U.S. grand strategy overall."—SAIS Review Promoting the rule of law has become a major part of Western efforts to spread democracy and market economics around the world. Yet, although programs to foster the rule of law abroad have mushroomed, well-grounded knowledge about what factors ensure success, and why, remains scarce. In Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad, leading practitioners and policy-oriented scholars draw on years of experience—in Russia, China, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—to critically assess the rationale, methods, and goals of rule-of-law policies. These incisive, accessible essays offer vivid portrayals and penetrating analyses of the challenges that define this vital but surprisingly little-understood field. Contributors include Rachel Belton (Truman National Security Project), Lisa Bhansali (World Bank), Christina Biebesheimer (World Bank), Thomas Carothers (Carnegie Endowment), Wade Channell, Stephen Golub, and David Mednicoff (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Laure-Hélène Piron (Overseas Development Institute), Matthew Spence (Yale Law School), Matthew Stephenson (Harvard Law School), and Frank Upham (NYU School of Law).