LLM/MPhil in Transnational Criminal Justice
August 30, 2023Specialized Master’s degree Programme in Comparative Constitutional Law
September 7, 2023Faculty of Law Programme:
Master of Laws with Focus on Legal Pluralism
Are you interested in the future of law in Africa?
The Centre for Legal Integration in Africa in the Department of Private Law at UWC is offering an interdisciplinary Master of Laws with a focus on legal pluralism. The programme presents the interaction of legal orders in Africa as a cultural struggle with enormous significance for legal identity in the continent. It is presented by global experts in the field, with the core module of Legal and Cultural Pluralism and a basket of electives in Children’s Rights, International Family Law, International Protection of Human Rights Law, and Islamic Law and Jurisprudence.
This programme aims to help students appreciate the difficulties associated with applying African customary law in a changing world. As evident in current problems such as family law reforms and curriculum decolonisation, the pedagogy of law in Africa requires a new approach to the identity of African customary laws. These laws stand at the centre of an intense cultural struggle between indigenous norms and imposed colonial laws masquerading as state laws. Since state laws permeate every aspect of life in Africa, they are inseparable from the socioeconomic changes brought by colonial rule. By highlighting how African customary laws emerge from people’s adaptation of indigenous norms to socioeconomic changes, this programme offers a critical, comparative contribution to conversations on the interaction of legal orders in contemporary modernity. The core module of the programme is Legal and Cultural Pluralism.