Africanizing African Legal Ethics by Murungi John;

Author:Murungi, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Such an exchange is unlikely to appear in African legal education not because the teaching of legal ethics is fully embraced but because, other than professional codes of conduct, it is totally ignored. Perhaps it is ignored because the teaching of law in Africa remains mostly under the regime of Euro-Western teaching of law. If in the Euro-West, legal ethics is not taken seriously, it is very likely it will not be taken seriously in Africa. Moreover, the assumption of what law is or what ethics is in the Euro-West is blindly transmitted in current legal education in Africa.

As the word “law” appears in the English language, for the most part, it is speakers of this language who are likely to understand what it means. There are millions, perhaps, billions of people who do not speak or understand this language among whom are millions of Africans. Failure to recognize the linguistic context of the meaning of law and its rule can lead to an erroneous belief that those who do not speak English share the meaning of the word law and its rule. The failure could lead to a false version of universalism. It is not to be assumed that what law and its rule mean in the West is identical to the meaning that Africans attach to law and its rule. Also, it should not be assumed that what the word “ethics” means in the Euro-West is the same as it means in African or in other non-Euro-Western territories. In the contemporary Euro-West, ethics is centered on an isolated individual, on an autonomous individual. In Africa, such an individual is an abstract or a fictional entity. In Africa, an individual is an individual in relation to other individuals. He or she is what he or she is through membership in a community – not a community as an aggregate of independent individuals by a living organic community (an Ubuntu community). This mode of being is not exclusive to Africans. There are other human communities where the individual is similarly situated. African jurisprudence and its attendant ethics emerge from such a community.

Evidently, as is the case with any other branch of legal ethics, reflection on African African legal ethics touches on law. It is beneficial to enter into a discussion on African African legal ethics via a discussion of the nature of law. This should not be taken as implying that ethics is subject to law for it could be the case that it is law that is subject to ethics. It could also be the case that each is subject to the other, which would imply that one cannot think about law without thinking about ethics, and one cannot think about ethics without thinking about law. Perhaps this kind of thinking is inevitable when one thinks about legal ethics, for the expression “legal ethics” implies both the concept of law and the concept of ethics. The relation between these two has been an important element in contemporary jurisprudence and should not be ignored.

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