Overview

"This work examines Somali customary law. Somali law is customary rather than punitive - law breakers, rather than being imprisoned or punished, are required to compensate their victims. A victim seldom fails to receive compensation because every Somali is insured by near kin against his or her liabilities under law. Because it is based on custom, Somali law has no need of legislation or legislators and hence is happily free from political influence. Michael Van Notten details the major features of Somali law, explaining as he does why to enforce change within it would be disastrous for the country. He argues for positive change as implicit in economic development, rather than requiring legislation - the sale of land, for example, and the enhancement of the status of women. As for the Somali political system, not only is there no need to set up a democracy - Van Notten clearly shows that to do so in a country so used to customary law would be to promote chaos. Written by a trained and sympathetic observer, ""Law Of The Somalis"" demonstrates how when viewed from a global perspective Somali law stands with Latin and Medieval law systems and the English common law against the statutory law that originated in continental Europe with the modern nation state. It explains the apparent anomalies extant in present-day Somalia and describes its prospects as well as the dangers facing it."

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9781569022504

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Michael van Notten graduated from Leiden University in Law and was admitted into practice in Rotterdam. He later served with a New York-based law firm and directed the Institution Europaeum, a Belgium-based policy institution. In the early 1990s he began a 12-year study of Somali law, travelling fearlessly in war-torn Somalia in order to analyse the intricacies of clan politics. He died in 2002.

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