What is the role of law schools in the project of decolonisation?

Tby Foluke Adebisi, University of Bristol Law School

 

Since 2015 and the #RhodesMustFall movement in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as its counterpart student movement at Oxford University in the UK, the question of the relevance of decolonisation to higher education has become quite prominent across Global North universities. Before this upsurge of interest, my academic work had been majorly concerned with the effects of incomplete decolonisation of African polities, for example, continued education dependency and humanitarian interventionism. However, with the increased focus on decolonisation in UK higher education, I became extremely frustrated with what I saw as the inadequacy, misunderstandings, and misuses of decolonisation as a practice and logic. I feel that these arose, not only from adamant refusal to engage with the questions thrown up by decolonisation, but also from the lack of a conceptual foundation to engage with those same questions.

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What Are Law Schools For?

by Foluke Adebisi, University of Bristol Law School

I wrote an article as part of a special issue that reflects on the state of the traditional law school and legal education. The full text is open access and can be accessed here or through your local library or other institutional channels. The purpose of the article was to think through the role of law schools in local and global society, especially in teaching the world to our students, especially if we want to engage with the possibility of changing the world. (more…)

The Convergence of Law, Race, and Development

by Foluke Adebisi, University of Bristol Law School

In an entry in the Encyclopedia of Law and Development, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021, I examine the nexus of the seemingly straightforward concepts of law, race, and development. The full text can be accessed here or through your local library or other institutional channels. [Alternatively, contact me.] This blog post briefly summarises my reflections on this convergence. In the encylopedia entry itself, I explore how a critical examination of the nexus between the three [i.e. law, race, and development] uncovers how they co-constitute each other, sometimes in negative ways. It is important, however, to begin any examination with an understanding that ‘race’ is not a legitimate scientific categorisation of humanity – it is neither neutral or objective. (more…)

Teaching IEL as a Nigerian Teacher in the Era of Decolonisation (IEL Collective Symposium II)

By Suzzie Onyeka Oyakhire, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, (University of Benin, Nigeria; suzzie.oyakhire@uniben.edu)

This piece reflects on the teaching of International Economic Law (IEL) in Nigeria specifically within the legal education curriculum of undergraduate studies. It considers the status of IEL as a course of study and considers some epistemological challenges encountered in teaching IEL, including the content to be covered within the curriculum.

The studying and teaching of IEL in Nigeria is largely undeveloped. This is because within the legal curriculum of undergraduate studies, IEL is not prioritised in the research agenda and teaching within the Faculties of Law. For several years IEL was excluded as a course of study in Nigerian universities and, where it is taught, it is relegated to the status of an optional course. Consequently, over the years, several lawyers have graduated without any significant exposure to IEL. Often, the earliest exposure with IEL occurs during postgraduate studies overseas in which the knowledge and understanding of IEL is influenced by the perspectives of their teachers, usually teaching from, or at least influenced by a Eurocentric position. (more…)

Why we are teaching Law and Race at the University of Bristol

By Dr Foluke Adebisi, Teaching Fellow (University of Bristol Law School).

‘Education does not change the world. Education changes people. People change the world.’ — Paulo Freire, Brazilian Philosopher and Educator

In the 2018/2019 academic year, Yvette Russell and I will be (for the first time) teaching a unit called Law and Race. It is a very exciting prospect, not least because there are very few law schools in the UK who teach race in any direct or focused way, and much fewer have a unit dedicated to race. This has been an intellectually stimulating enterprise for both of us, and in this article, I would like to explain why we have embarked on it and what we hope to achieve.

The history of the world can be perceived as the history of continuing inequalities. Oftentimes, race functions as the motivation for and justification of oppressive social, cultural, economic and political structures. This is evidenced by colonisation, slavery, and persistent global racial inequalities that cut across gender and class. Law has often been used to create, justify or maintain these demarcations. Notwithstanding this, legal study often ignores the correlation between race and law, as well as the paradox inherent in the use of law to both oppress and liberate. In our unit we aim to examine legal history and the current state of the law in a critical exploration of how legal evolution has impacted upon and caused racial disparities, and how these factors are continuously consciously and unconsciously embedded and reproduced within the operation of law. (more…)