‘Mind with Mind and Spirit with Spirit’: Lord Denning and African Legal Education
| Author | Ambreena Manji,John A. Harrington |
| Date | 01 September 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00262 |
| Published date | 01 September 2003 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2003
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 376±99
`Mind with Mind and Spirit with Spirit':
Lord Denning and African Legal Education
John A. Harrington* and Ambreena Manji
Lord Denning played an important role in the establishment and
development of legal education and lawyers' training in Africa from
the late 1950s onwards. By exploring this involvement it is possible
to add to existing work on Denning's vision of the role of law and
legal professionalism. In post-colonial Africa, order and stability
were best assured by a cadre of lawyers imbued with the virtues
characteristic of English practitioners over the centuries. These
ineffable qualities could only be apprehended through direct contact
with English lawyers and, to a lesser extent, law teachers. These
views are born of the tension between universalism and nationalism
in Denning's legal thought.
INTRODUCTION
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given
(Rupert Brooke)
Much has been written about Lord Denning's long and often
controversial career from his appointment as a judge of the High Court
in 1944 to his resignation as Master of the Rolls in 1982. Academic
commentary has in the main focused on his exceptional reputation as a
common law judge and on his contribution to the development of English
376
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*School of Law, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, England
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Fifth Theory in Legal Education
Colloqium held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London in January 2002,
and to the Conference on Post-Colonial Legal Studies, hosted by the University of
British Columbia in June 2002. We are grateful to the participants on both occasions
for their comments and to the referees of the Journal of Law and Society for their
suggestions. Research on this paper was made possible by a Social Science Small
Grant from the Nuffield Foundation.
law.
1
Attention has also been paid to the peculiarly Christian foundations
of his work as a jurist,
2
to the Englishness of his vision of the law
3
and to
his conservatism on matters of immigration.
4
However, his involvement with African law has barely been acknow-
ledged.
5
This is a regrettable gap in the literature, since Lord Denning's
considerable work on Africa may be said to represent a confluence of these
themes. The present essay is an attempt to fill that gap.
6
Our study is organized with reference to a number of explanatory
categories, which allow us to clarify and interpret Denning's distinctive
views as to:
·the relation between the academy and the legal profession;
·the role envisaged for the law in Africa;
·the differences between African and English law;
·the `heritage' which English lawyers had to share with their African
counterparts;
·the means by which this `heritage' was to be shared.
Lord Denning's vision of the role of law and the purposes of legal education
in Africa differed in certain respects from that of L.C.B. Gower, with whom
he worked for a time on some of these issues. It can also be contrasted with
that of the British authorities at the height of colonialism, and with that of the
`Law and Development' movement which was influential in the 1960s and
70s. Unlike the former, Denning saw a need for a cadre of professional
lawyers, trained in the English style; unlike the latter, his ideal of lawyering
377
1 There are two authoritative volumes: P. Robson and P. Watchman (eds.), Justice,
Lord Denning and the Constitution (1981); and J.L. Jowell and J.P.W.B. McAuslan
(eds.), Lord Denning: The Judge and the Law (1984). See, also, the special issue of
(1999) 14 Denning Law J. which contains articles on Denning's work in the areas of
obligations, public law, family law, and jurisprudence.
2 A. Phang, `The Natural Law Foundations of Lord Denning's Thought and Work'
(1999) 14 Denning Law J. 159; Lord Edmund Davies, `Lord Denning: Christian
Advocate and Judge' (1986) 1 Denning Law J. 41.
3 D.R. Klinck, ```This Other Eden'' Lord Denning's Pastoral Vision' (1994) 14 Ox. J.
of Legal Studies 25.
4 C. Palley, `Lord Denning and Human Rights: The Reassertion of the Right to
Justice' in Jowell and McAuslan, op. cit., n. 1, p. 297.
5
Denning's involvement with Africa is mentioned only in passing by his biographers;
see E. Heward, Lord Denning: A Biography (1997) 75 and I. Freeman, Lord Denning:
A Life (1993) 259. For a recent study of other judicial involvement in African legal
matters, see A.W.B. S impson, `The Devlin Co mmission (1959): Col onialism,
Emergencies, and the Rule of Law' (2002) 22 Ox. J. of Legal Studies 17.
6 The themes discussed in this paper arise in the context of our ongoing research on
the role of British lawyers in the creation of African law. In particular we wish to
examine the manner in which different conceptions of what law is, and how it should
be taught, informed the work of British legal scholars in and on Africa. For a broad
review of the issues, see J.A. Harrington and A. Manji, `The Emergence of African
Law as an Academic Discipline in Britain' (2003) 102 African Affairs 109±34.
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