Disputes and the Philosophy of Law in Africa

Discussions of non-formal justice have tended to be seen in terms of opposition between formal" or state justice on the one hand, and informal or popular justice on the other. Models or constructs of state justice are depicted as rule-based institutions, associated with central or state government and dependent on experts with technical legal training. This model is seen as operating on the basis of sanctions or coercion, emphasizing competition and adversarial proceedings whose results are zero-sum, with winners and losers. By contrast, popular justice is seen as having characteristics oppositional to those of state justice, such as informal procedures, non-bureaucratization, conciliatory and consensual decisional making processes.

A new full, revised version as an additional analysis for the study of the history of the philosophy of law.