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A Note on the Construction of the Gold Coast Reception Statute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robert B. Seidman
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Extract

From the evidence of the minute paper which preceded the drafting of the first African reception statute, it may be asserted that the intendment of the Colonial Office officials was:

(1) that the limiting date in the statute was to apply as well to the common law and the doctrines of equity as to the statutes of general application;

(2) that the phrase “Imperial Laws”, refers as well to the common law and doctrines of equity as to the statutes of general application, so that the West African courts were granted a plenitude of power to determine the applicability to local conditions of judge-made law as well as legislation.

It is difficult, however, to determine the intendent of the phrase, “statutes of general application”, in the premises.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of African Law , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Spring 1969 , pp. 45 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1969

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References

2 Supreme Court Ordinance, 1876, s. 17.

3 Id., s.85.

4 I was unable to find the original file which included this opinion. It is said in a minute to be in file 7136.

page 46 note 1 So much is indicated in the minute paper here discussed. C.O. 96/112, minute initialled “E. F[airfield] 6–11–74”.

page 46 note 2 Ibid.

page 47 note 1 London Gazette, 28 April, 1865.

page 47 note 2 The Supreme Court (Reconstitution) Ordinance, No. 12 of 1873; see The Ordinances of the Legislative Council of the Colony of Hongkong, Concise Ed. from the year 1844 to the end of 1890 (Leach, Comp; Hongkong: The Government Printers, 1891).Google Scholar

page 48 note 1 At p. 16.

page 48 note 2 C.O. 96/112, undated minute initialled “E.F.”.

page 48 note 3 Id., minute initialled “A.W.L.H[erbert]” dated 24 December.

page 49 note 1 Id., minute dated 9 March.

page 49 note 2 Despatch No. 55, 16 April, 1875, C.O. 96/112.

page 49 note 3 See Tanganyika Order-in-Council, 1020, art. 17.

page 49 note 4 Section 85.

page 50 note 1 Park, Sources of Nigerian Law (1963), 37.

page 50 note 2 Allott, Essays in African Law (1960), 24–25.

page 50 note 3 Daniels, The Common Law in West Africa (1965), 333.

page 51 note 1 Section 7.

page 51 note 2 See Jex v. McKinney (1899), 14 A.C. 77.