IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v9y2019i1p17-d210645.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Integration of African Customary Legal Concepts into Modern Law: Restorative Justice: A Kenyan Example

Author

Listed:
  • Buluma Bwire

    (School of Law, University of Nairobi, Nairobi 00100, Kenya)

Abstract

African societies have been governed according to known norms, customs, and practices that together constitute African customary law. These societies have placed emphasis on communal as opposed to individual identity, and this has extended to their justice systems. African customary law therefore has placed emphasis on the concept of restorative justice based on the understanding of restoring the societal balance that has been disrupted by crime. This has fostered offender accountability, reparation to the victim, and full participation by the affected community members. This essay examines the resurgence of African legal philosophy and its subsequent integration into modern African formal legal systems. In particular, it interrogates the recent Kenyan example of integrating traditional dispute resolution mechanisms as one of the guiding principles for the exercise of judicial authority by Kenyan courts under the 2010 Constitution. It argues for the development of structures to properly utilize such mechanisms within the Kenyan context.

Suggested Citation

  • Buluma Bwire, 2019. "Integration of African Customary Legal Concepts into Modern Law: Restorative Justice: A Kenyan Example," Societies, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-8, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:17-:d:210645
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/1/17/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/1/17/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pamela Cox & Barry Godfrey, 2019. "Editors’ Introduction: ‘Access to Justice: Historical Approaches to Victims of Crime’," Societies, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-2, November.
    2. Jacklyne Atotso & George O. Achar, 2023. "The Nature of Traditional Justice in Africa: A Case Study of the Bukusu People of Kenya," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 7(8), pages 1001-1008, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:17-:d:210645. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.