Conflict between State Legal Norms and Norms Underlying Popular Beliefs: Witchcraft in Africa as a Case Study*

Beliefs about the causation of life and death, fortune and misfortune, and good and evil change over time. Often, these beliefs are based on different concepts of human agency—concepts that have important implications for views on responsibility, culpability, and liability. As normative orientations change, societies undergo periods of profound transformation, and social and interpersonal tensions often develop in the process. One example of this phenomenon is the friction that results when norms underlying popular beliefs are at odds with emerging state legal norms. People might feel that new standards of behavior established by the courts are difficult to comprehend. They may sense that these rules apply retroactively without prior notification— in essence, they may perceive the standards as “foreign.” During this transition period, judges face hard choices in establishing what is “fair” under such emerging legal norms. Examining judicial decisions where norms underlying popular beliefs clash with emerging state legal norms provides a window on how courts negotiate periods of major belief change. It is instructive to evaluate how judges in developing countries address these problematic issues, and to specifically identify the types of legal reasoning judges employ in attempting to integrate different value systems into a coherent rule of law. This article treats African disputes about witchcraft as a case study of the conflict between state legal norms and norms underlying popular beliefs. The aim is to examine how these disputes challenge judges to produce fair outcomes when legal cultures clash and to