Equity in Colonial West Africa

In English law, equity is assigned relatively benign and comfortable roles, functioning as a canon of interpretation of the common law; as its versatile and flexible help-mate and mitigator of its formal strictness. More than this, equity claims a moral justice or conscience function that is deeply embedded in legal culture. As a consequence, equity has been extremely successful in lubricating the machinery of English law, providing it with a ready means of change to meet the needs of the dominant actors within society. This justice function is, however, contradicted by equity's history and its practical functioning, particularly, within the British colonial experience. This article examines the effect of the imposition of English equity on the prevailing customary law systems in colonial West Africa. The analysis challenges the fundamental claim of equity to a moral justice function within the colonial regime and argues that equity served the imperial objective as an instrument for fragmenting and dislocating indigenous property systems in order to facilitate the installation of capitalist property forms

Colonialism · Equity (law) · Indigenous · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Land Rights and Reforms · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa

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