Editorial Citizenship and Accountability: Customary Law and Traditional Leadership under South Africa’s Democratic Constitution

The Internet and Democratic Citizenship

Relations between the public and holders of political authority are in a period of transformative flux. On the one side, new expectations and meanings of citizenship are being entertained and occasionally acted upon. On the other, an inexorable impoverishment of mainstream political communication is taking place. The Internet has the potential to improve public communications and enrich democra...

Campaign Advertising and Democratic Citizenship

Concern about the state of American democracy is a staple of political science and popular commentary. Critics warn that levels of citizen participation and political knowledge are disturbingly low and that seemingly ubiquitous political advertising is contributing to the problem. We argue that political advertising is rife with both informational and emotional content and actually contributes ...

An Evolutionary Contractarian View of Primitive Law: The Institutions and Incentives Arising Under Customary Indian Law

The European conquest and absorption of native American Indian groups obviously produced tremendous changes in the way Indians live and interact with one another. One very important source of change in Indian life was the changes in the rules and institutions of Indian law. Few Indian groups had any sort of strong central legal authority before Europeans began to exert various types of influenc...

Islamic Law , Customary Law , and Afghan Informal Justice

This report is part of the United States Institute of Peace’s (USIP) ongoing effort to understand the pluralist legal system of Afghanistan. It examines, compares, and contrasts Islamic law with traditional forms of justice in an attempt to elucidate how such rule of law approaches interact as well as provide a fuller understanding of each system to better guide rule of law practice, policy, an...

The Formation of Customary Law