(Book Review) "Under The Broken Scale of Justice" by Justice Nyo' Wakai

Justice Nyo' Wakai. Under The Broken Scale of Justice: The Law and My Times. Langaa Publishers, 2008. 204 pp.

This book explores the latent and sometimes overt undercurrents that have shaped the judicial history of Cameroon since the United Nations Trusteeship period. It is an insightful account by a critical observer privileged to serve as Director of Public Prosecutions and a judge in a post-independence context characterized by dual and often conflictual legal systems inspired by French and English colonialism.

Justice Nyo'Wakai demonstrates how the conflict of judicial concepts, procedures and usages have led to the Francophone judicial system trying to impose itself on the Anglophone judicial system in Cameroon.

 

Often reduced to toothless bulldogs by new constitutional dispensations informed largely by the French colonial legacy and Francophone realities, Anglophones have bemoaned the independence of the Judiciary identified with their Anglo-Saxon heritage. In the face of such domination and the highhandedness of the Executive, only mature cool headedness and the ability to bend over backwards on the part of Anglophone legal practitioners have contained the explosive situation and allowed for a gradual evolution of the Judicial System in Cameroon.

Comments

[Ma Mary]

The purpose is total annexation and erasure in all domains. Why are we blind to this.

[dango tumma]

UNITIL PEOPLE TELL THE TRUTH WITHOUT SUGAR COATING IT, THEY WILL NEVER BE FREE
I MEAN MR JUSTICE, WHAT DO YOU CALL ANGLOPHONE?
WHAT NATIONALITY IS THAT? IS THAT TERM ROOTED IN ANY SOUTHERN CAMEROONIAN HISTORICAL ARCHIVES? NO NO NO

OUR KIDS MUST BE TAUGHT OUR REAL HISTORY, WE ARE BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONIANS. WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM CAMEROUN, WE ARE UNDER A NEW AFRICAN COLONIALIZATION, WE WANT OUR INDEPENDENCE

[amy amster]

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