Ezekiel Kelly, a Lecturer at Censil University, has posted two papers on the legal history of Liberia. The first is Sovereignty on Trial: Liberian Law, Forced Labour and the League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, 1929–1930:
I examine how Liberia used law and sovereignty to answer the forced-labour accusations of 1929–1930, and what the inquiry revealed about government in the interior. I read the commission’s report against the government’s replies, the legal provisions reproduced in the report and American diplomatic correspondence. I argue that Liberia’s defence depended on its claim to control both the investigation and the reforms that followed. The government authorised the inquiry, disputed parts of the evidence and accepted recommendations without accepting every finding. The report exposed a different relationship between government and the people required to work. Officials could demand labour through commissioners, chiefs and soldiers, while those subjected to these demands had limited access to officials who might protect them. The legal problem concerned the enforcement of freedom as much as its formal recognition. I also examine the unequal terms of international scrutiny. The commission investigated Firestone but qualified its findings by reference to corporate knowledge, and it recommended foreign officials as a remedy for Liberian misgovernment. I conclude that Liberia’s defence of independence must be considered alongside its failure to make constitutional protection accessible in the interior.The second is Two Laws, One State: Customary Courts and the Legal Governance of Liberia's Hinterland, 1912-1956:
I examine how Liberia's government incorporated customary authority into the administration of its hinterland and how the Supreme Court contested the resulting exercise of judicial power. Two judgments, Jedah and others v Horace (1916) and Karmo and another v Morris and another (1919), expose a disagreement within the state over the constitutional position of the interior. In Karmo, the government argued that constitutional restrictions did not govern executive action beyond the coastal counties. The Court answered that Liberia's claim to sovereignty carried constitutional obligations throughout its territory. Yet its reasoning also justified the incorporation of indigenous communities without their consent. Reading these decisions alongside the 1930 international inquiry and the 1956 Aborigines Law, I argue that constitutional review and administrative domination developed within the same legal order. The 1956 legislation made complaints, records and official supervision part of interior government while retaining courts closely connected to the executive. Legal plurality therefore requires an account of who controlled jurisdiction and access to review. The dates in the title define the proposed historical span; the precise statutory basis for the opening date remains to be established.
--Dan Ernst
