Introduction

Yash Pal Ghai, a Kenyan citizen, was born in Nairobi in 1938. He went to school there and then studied law in Oxford and Harvard and was called to the English Bar. He started teaching law as a lecturer in Dar-es-Salaam in 1963, eventually becoming Professor and Dean, before leaving in 1971. Since then he has held academic posts in Yale, Warwick, and Hong Kong. In addition to numerous visiting appointments, he was Research Director of the International Legal Center in New York 1972–73 and a Research Fellow at Uppsala University from 1973–78. He has written or edited nearly 20 books, mainly about public law and constitutionalism, covering several states and regions, but particularly Commonwealth countries.

Ghai is highly respected as a scholar, but he is even better known as a legal adviser to governments and agencies, especially in Asia, the South Pacific and East Africa. He has been highly influential on post-independence constitutional development in the South Pacific, serving as constitutional adviser in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, Western Samoa, and the Solomon Islands, among others. He has also been involved in a variety of peace-keeping and trouble-shooting activities in Bougainville, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, East Timor, and Nepal. More recently he served as a constitutional adviser in Iraq and Nepal and is currently facilitating negotiations between the Indian Government and the Nagas.