Building on Custom: Land Tenure Policy and Economic Development in Ghana

This Note addresses the intersection of customary and statutory land law in the land tenure policy of Ghana. It argues that improving the current land tenure policy demands integration of customary land law and customary authorities into the statutory system. After describing why and how customary property practices are central to the economic viability of any property system, the Note gives a brief overview of Ghana’s customary and statutory land law. The Note concludes with specific policy suggestions about how Ghana could better draw on the strength of its customary land sector

Customary International Law Acts As Federal Common Law in U.S. Courts

This Note discusses how international common law should act as federal common law in U.S. courts. This Note also explores the constitutional challenges involved in incorporating customary international law into U.S. federal common law. Such challenges revolve around the institutions of representative democracy, federal jurisdiction, and the doctrine of separation of powers. Part I of this Note discusses federal common law and customary international law. Part II of this Note presents the negative and positive effects of incorporating customary international law into federal common law. This Note concludes that to preserve national honor among the community of nations, and to protect U.S. citizens from powerful national and international factions, the U.S. federal courts must continue their incorporation of customary international law as a part of federal common law. As in the days of Jonathan Smith, customary international law is the answer to reprehensible oppression

Customary law before the Conquest

An article on early English legal history and customary law by Professor Derek Roebuck (Associate Senior Research Fellow, IALS). The article is taken from a lecture given by the author at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies on February 1, 2006 and was published in Amicus Curiae – Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by SALS at the IALS (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London)

Whanaketanga/Evolution : exhibition report for Masters of Māori Visual Arts at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

"Whanaketanga | Evolution, focused on technical construction and application using various materials. As art evolves, we find new ways to express concept, thought and imagination. This Exhibition Report is aimed at maintaining customary concepts and techniques using new materials, not customarily associated with Māori weaving such as cane, chain, screen mesh, perspex and plastic. Whilst the customary use of Māori woven taonga serves a utilitarian purpose, the challenge was to show new ways of thinking aimed at creating new forms of art not necessarily seen before. This biography of a decade of practice as a weaver begins with works completed over the past two years, submitted and exhibited as part of the Master of Māori Visual Arts journey. The exhibition is supplemented by previous works to demonstrate a personal evolution into new works employing non-customary materials."--Forewor

The Customary International Law Supergame: Order and Law

Customary international law is an enigma. It is produced by the decentralized actions of states, and it generally lacks centralized enforcement mechanisms. Political science realists and some rationalist legal scholars argue that customary international law cannot affect state behavior: that it is “epiphenomenal.” This article develops a model of an n-player prisoner’s dilemma in the customary international law context that shows that it is plausible that states would comply with customary international law under certain circumstances. These circumstances relate to: (i) the relative value of cooperation versus defection, (ii) the number of states effectively involved, (iii) the extent to which increasing the number of states involved increases the value of cooperation or the detriments of defection, including whether the particular issue has characteristics of a commons problem, a public good, or a network, (iv) the information available to the states involved regarding compliance and defection, (v) the relative patience of states in valuing the benefits of long-term cooperation compared to short-term defection, (vi) the expected duration of interaction, (vii) the frequency of interaction, and (viii) whether there are also bilateral relationships or other multilateral relationships between the involved states. One implication of this model is to lend credence to customary international law. From a research standpoint, this model identifies a number of parameters for which data may be developed in order to test the model. From a policy standpoint, this model shows what types of contexts, including malleable institutional features, may affect the ability of states to reach stable and efficient equilibria in their customary international law relations.

Order Without Judges: Customary Adjudication

Scholarship on custom and law has largely focused on the creation and enforcement of informal rules, demonstrating and in some cases endorsing the existence of order without law. But creating and enforcing rules are only two of the three functions of governance, corresponding roughly with what in other contexts are called the legislative and executive branches. The third function—adjudication—has not played such a prominent role in the scholarly literature on informal governance. As one leading scholar puts it: Custom has no constitution or judges. But if customs can be created and enforced by nonstate actors, why should scholars assume that formal (that is, noncustomary) courts are the only institutions that do or should adjudicate those customs? This Essay seeks to describe and emphasize the role of customary adjudication, the third branch of customary governance. In doing so, it has three main goals: first, to argue that customary governance can be understood in terms of the same three functions familiar to students of formal governance; second, to deliver a preliminary and tentative account of the third of these branches; and finally, to suggest that existing scholarship on custom and law has given comparatively little attention to the functions and forms of customary adjudication. If successful, those contributions should set the stage for future descriptive and normative work

Customary versus Technological. Advancement Tests.

In an environment where the optimal level of care is unknown, we ask under a state of the art defense which method is better able to induce parties to undertake optimal care. Assuming courts can see a noisy signal of research activities undertaken by a defendant and some of its competitors, we ask whether courts should use a biased or unbiased average to compare care. We find that the later is better.Tort law, standard of care, customary test, technological advancement test.