Daughters: ‘children of a lesser god’?
This case is the third in our Women’s Month series on how courts deal with matters involving women. The case includes 13 invisible daughters and a fraudulent attempt by the estate administrator to cut out all the other sons and direct family from inheriting. So when...
Out of gas
Nigeria is $9bn in hock to a gas-processing company after it was found to have reneged on the terms of a 20-year agreement. Read judgment Is Nigeria the villain or the victim in what has become a $9bn dispute between that state and a company specially formed for a gas...
High Court judge condemns SCA precedent in horrific rape appeal
The lone woman on a three-person High Court Bench hearing a horrific gang rape appeal, has declared she is not obliged to follow a much-disputed 2011 decision by the Supreme Court of Appeal that would have greatly reduced the sentence. Such a declaration is...
A court order is not ‘a mere suggestion’ – judge
Nambasi V Khan Investments Ltd (Miscellaneous Application No. 602 of 2018) [2019] UGHCCD 126 (28 June 2019); High Court, Kampala, Uganda Read judgment This case, in Uganda’s high court, followed an earlier matter in which the Assistant Registrar ordered that a truck...
Mentally ill man can’t be returned to Sierra Leone – UK courts
There might be widespread agreement that mental illness should be de-stigmatised, but that does not make it any easier for courts dealing with people who show signs of serious psychological ill-health and who are liable to mistreatment because of their illness. In...
Swazi court refuses bail for suspected human trafficker
With the eyes of the world now more sharply focused on human trafficking, all attempts by African courts to help stamp it out are important and will be reflected in annual international surveys. Though cases involving trafficking charges are still rare, a Swazi judge,...
A challenge for women in Kenya: get this law changed
Our Women’s Month judgment this week comes from Kenya’s Judge William Musyoka. What makes his decision stand out is that he has found and highlighted an anomaly in the law dealing with rape, a particularly traumatic crime that is all too prevalent. He explained that...
Weak link in the law?
Does posting a hyperlink to a court judgment constitute publication of the ruling? A UK court says not — unless the ruling expressly prohibits this Read judgment If a court bars the publication of certain material on social media, would inserting a hyperlink into that...
Judge steps down over conduct of counsel
An acting judge has recused himself from hearing a murder trial, saying that counsel on both sides had behaved so badly that he was unable to trust them. Acting judge James Grant, formerly one of South Africa’s leading academic experts on criminal law, said the...
First Women’s Month judgment: Judge Titus Mlangeni on femicide in Eswatini
The first judgment chosen as part of Jifa’s Women’s Month focus is from Eswatini. It deals with the murder of a young woman who had a toddler, now left an orphan. What makes this judgment on sentence different from many others we read each week, is the comments by the...