Jorg Kleis, African Regional Community Courts and Their Contribution to Continental Integration
| Pages | 466-470 |
| Author | |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| DOI | 10.3366/ajicl.2019.0284 |
Regional integration in Africa, as we know it today, dates back to the immediate post-independence era. However, very few monographs exploring the
Dr Jorg Kleis's
The introduction addresses a number of topics, including regional integration in Africa and whether regional integration is possible through jurisprudence. There is a useful discussion on the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) as an engine for European integration. This discussion explains the initial resistance by EU member states and their respective national courts, their eventual acceptance of the CJEU's jurisprudence and the significant implications for national sovereignty and constitutional law that followed. The story of how the CJEU overcame these headwinds and expanded its influence on European integration in its early stages of evolution is important to African courts. In order to assess the work of the community courts and their contribution to the integration process, the author adopts an efficacy test with criteria focusing on structure, process and outcome. Influential external and internal factors that impinge on the work of the courts are also taken into account. These factors include: dependency on state consent; jurisdiction; case load and case quality; the degree, progress or stage of integration; differences in legal systems and legal culture; and the state of national judiciaries. The author returns to these themes in the remaining parts of the book.
Chapter Two discusses the vital importance of regional integration in Africa and situates it within the context of Africa's pre-colonial and post-colonial history. It assesses the relationship between economic, political and legal integration before providing an overview of the regional economic communities whose courts are the focus of the book. These communities are ECOWAS, EAC and SADC. The author provides a brief history of each community, its institutional structures...
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