The lack of female judicial appointments in the history of international courts has led to the introduction of obligations and targets for nominating/appointing authorities to select and elect women candidates. Compliance with these obligations remains a challenge and the women who aspire to these offices must not only have the requisite qualifications, but also pass through the nomination and election processes, which can involve a high level of political manoeuvring. Mentoring, deliberate mobilization, and gatekeeping may also play a role. Other important elements that may affect a woman’s international judicial career include socio-economic factors, geo-cultural politics, the political will to nominate women, and a blend of contextual experiences, institutional opportunities, and personal agency. This chapter probes these dynamics, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities for women who seek careers on the international bench, focusing specifically on the unique experiences of female African judges in international and regional courts.
The roles of the courts have become an inevitable social reality in adjudicating customary law disputes in Nigeria and South Africa. Because these courts are established and validated along positivist practice, they inevitably require the adoption of a process for ascertaining and applying customary law since the judges of these courts are not ordinarily conversant with its norms. Hence judicial notice has been adopted as one of the ways of ascertaining customary law. The conceptualisation and theoretical basis of customary law cannot be ignored in the analysis of the process of its ascertainment. Crucial to this are theories of centralism, legal pluralism and positivism. This paper therefore identifies challenges in ascertaining customary law through judicial notice in the various cadres of courts operative in both jurisdictions amid the operation of these theories and the attendant implications thereof. It elucidates the rules that guide the judge and identifies the challenges encountered in each jurisdiction based on how each law is scripted. It also contends that while positivist rules and procedure regulate how customary law can be ascertained and applied by the courts, its application must however be limited to the point where it threatens the essence of customary law. .
KeywordsAscertainment; judicial notice; court procedure' positivism; centralism; legal pluralism ……………………………………………………….
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This chapter evaluates the impact of global influences on the type and form of legal education adopted in Nigeria from 1962 to 2019, with a focus on influences drawn from the United States. The establishment of the Council of Legal Education and the Nigerian Law School in 1962, about a hundred years after British rule in the colony of Lagos was formalized, was to meet the needs of the emerging nation and its attendant. While drawing largely from British legal education systems in the early years, some ideas about the curriculum and form of legal education in Nigeria have been modeled along legal education structures in the United States, in particular elite law schools. The US influence has been due partly to the funding schemes provided by US-based organizations such as the Carnegie Foundation and the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. This chapter identifies the factors behind US influence, explores the tensions between efforts to internationalize amid emerging global socioeconomic trends, and the desirability of providing a “domesticated” legal education that meets the needs of the Nigerian state and its citizens.
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