This week in law, social policy, and medical anthropology: African-led legal scholarship on constitutional rights, cultural heritage, and AI liability, alongside global studies on policing, health data, and AI washing.
📊 This week at a glance
🌍 African-led research
South Africa’s Constitution already obliges the state to provide a Basic Income Grant, argues a new legal analysis.
Section 27(1)(c) of the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to social security, including appropriate social assistance if unable to support themselves and their dependants. This article shifts the Basic Income Grant debate from economic feasibility to constitutional obligation, arguing that the legal framework already justifies a universal grant. For African scholars and policymakers, it means the BIG is not just a policy choice but a legal duty, strengthening advocacy for permanent income support.
South Africa’s social welfare system excludes unemployed, non-disabled adults aged 18–59, leaving a ‘missing middle’ with no permanent grant.
This legal analysis distinguishes the absence of a permanent grant from temporary Social Relief of Distress (SRD) support, which is not a long-term solution. It argues that constitutional provisions and case law require permanent inclusion of this group. For African social policy, it highlights a gap that leaves millions without a safety net, urging legal reform to extend permanent social assistance.
Ghana’s Kente fabric cannot be fully protected under current global intellectual property rules, which are shaped by Anglo-American and European legal traditions.
The paper shows that these rules fail to safeguard most African creative heritage, especially when traditional cultural expressions cross borders amid ethnic fragmentation. Using Kente as a case study, it argues that protecting heritage beyond Ghana requires rethinking IP law to fit communal, multi-ethnic ownership. For African scholars and policymakers, it underscores the need for regional or continental frameworks to protect traditional cultural expressions from misappropriation.
Nigerian and Anglo-Canadian succession laws differ in how they define personhood, affecting testamentary capacity and property rights.
The paper argues that retroactive tests for testamentary capacity undermine individual autonomy and turn will-writing into forced heirship, fueling unnecessary litigation. By comparing Nigerian and Anglo-Canadian approaches, it shows how legal conceptions of personhood drive property distribution after death. For African legal systems, it suggests that reforming succession law requires attention to cultural and philosophical ideas of personhood, not just procedural rules.
Penal populism’s core claims—that punitive measures are effective and publicly supported—fail under critical scrutiny.
This theoretical article integrates criminology and restrained retributive justice to assess justifications for harsh criminal justice policies. It finds that these claims do not hold up, challenging the basis for mass incarceration and punitive turn. For African criminal justice systems, it warns against adopting populist punitive policies that lack evidence and may worsen prison conditions without improving public safety.
South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal may have backtracked on the State’s duty to disclose all information in bail applications, even if it favours the accused.
In Minister of Police v Nontsele, the majority judgment seems to depart from the established rule that state functionaries must inform the court of all available information. This case note analyses the implications for fair bail hearings and the accused’s rights. For African criminal procedure, it signals a potential shift that could undermine transparency and fairness in bail decisions, requiring close monitoring by legal practitioners.
Morocco’s move to clinical AI raises unresolved questions about who is legally liable when algorithms inform medical decisions.
This socio-legal analysis examines how legal responsibility is constructed and distributed in Moroccan healthcare as AI moves from experimentation to clinical evaluation. It finds that current legal texts and professional trust frameworks are not yet adapted to algorithmic decision-making. For African health systems, it highlights the need for clear liability rules to protect patients and professionals as AI adoption grows.
🔬 Global breakthroughs
In a Los Angeles public hospital, trauma surgeons routinely navigate the embedded presence of police within clinical care.
This ethnographic study shows how policing and trauma care are entangled, with police presence affecting how surgeons manage violence-related injuries. It challenges the view that hospitals are purely spaces of care, revealing how carceral practices shape medical treatment. For African health scholars, it offers a comparative lens on how policing may intersect with healthcare in contexts of state violence and inequality.
The European Health Data Space Regulation creates selective visibility, with some actors and data uses more visible than others.
This study examines the absence and presence of different stakeholders in the EHDS, a new EU legal framework for health data reuse by policymakers and industry. It finds that the regulation’s governance mechanisms may privilege certain interests while obscuring others. For African data governance, it underscores the importance of scrutinising whose data and which purposes are made visible in emerging health data infrastructures.
‘AI washing’—misrepresenting AI use to attract investors—requires adapting securities laws, finds a comparative US–EU analysis.
This article provides the first comprehensive comparison of how US and EU jurisdictions regulate AI washing, showing that traditional securities laws need updates to address novel technological contexts. It argues that current frameworks may not adequately protect investors from exaggerated AI claims. For African markets, it signals the need for regulatory vigilance as AI-related investment grows, to prevent similar misrepresentation.
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