Legal studies and governance research this week.
📊 This week at a glance
🌍 African-led research
South Africa’s democratic backsliding stems more from eroded prosecutorial independence than electoral fraud.
Jonathan Klaaren (Legal Ethics, 2025) distinguishes ‘low’ Presidential lawfare (routine political-legal maneuvering) from ‘high’ lawfare (systemic attacks on rule-of-law institutions). For African democracies, this reframes the threat: the danger is not rigged elections but compromised prosecutors and weakened legal ethics.
South Africa’s legal frameworks inadequately protect children’s rights in custody disputes involving abuse allegations.
Thukuse and Masumbe (E-Journal of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, 2025) find gaps in both domestic and international law when applied to custody cases with child abuse claims. For African legal scholars and practitioners, this highlights the need for clearer statutory guidance and better coordination between family law and child protection systems.
South African municipalities have a legal duty to manage estuaries, but national-provincial tensions hinder enforcement.
Robertson and Erasmus (Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, 2025) show that while municipalities like Knysna are best placed to protect threatened estuaries, overlapping national and provincial competencies create confusion. For African environmental law, this case illustrates how multi-level governance can stall conservation even when local authorities are willing.
Nigeria lacks a dedicated legal framework for clinical legal education, unlike the United States.
Maduafor (International Journal of Clinical Legal Education, 2025) compares Nigeria’s fragmented constitutional provisions and guidelines with the US’s enforceable standards. For African legal education, this means law students miss hands-on training, and access-to-justice programs remain underdeveloped without a clear regulatory backbone.
South Africa’s Competition Commission used competition law to lower school uniform costs, improving access to education.
Mbulawa (Obiter, 2025) reviews how the Commission challenged exclusive agreements between schools and suppliers that inflated prices. For African policymakers, this shows that competition law can directly protect constitutional rights like education by curbing anti-competitive practices in essential goods.
South Africa’s constitutional equality clause is insufficient to address gender-based violence against marginalized identities.
Nodangala (E-Journal of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, 2025) argues that intersectionality—overlapping forms of discrimination—must be explicitly recognized in law to protect LGBTQ+ and disabled survivors of GBV. For African human rights advocacy, this means constitutional promises of equality need targeted implementation to reach the most vulnerable.
🔬 Global breakthroughs
Global nature restoration laws face weak implementation and enforcement, calling for a new ‘Restocene’ era.
Mauerhofer et al. (Restoration Ecology, 2025) review restoration legislation worldwide and find that while laws exist, enforcement gaps and lack of coordination undermine goals. For African nations with restoration commitments, this paper underscores that passing laws is not enough—dedicated agencies and monitoring are essential.
The legal concept of ‘care’ is unified across tort, medical, and family law, challenging assumptions of fragmentation.
Chadha-Sridhar (Law and Philosophy, 2025) argues that ‘care’ in law shares a core meaning—attending to another’s vulnerability—despite different doctrinal contexts. For legal theorists, this offers a framework to harmonize duties of care across fields, potentially simplifying liability standards.
Competition among NGOs for donations can incentivize worker misconduct, harming project quality.
Burani and Manna (Journal of Industrial Economics, 2025) model how NGOs, to attract funds, may underinvest in preventing employee sabotage or fraud. For African development organizations reliant on donor funding, this warns that market pressures can inadvertently erode accountability and project outcomes.
Rights of Nature laws in the US are adopted locally in counties with higher income, education, and Democratic voting.
Sindoni and Bryant (Socius, 2025) empirically analyze all US Rights of Nature (RoN) efforts from 2002 to 2024, finding adoption correlates with affluence and liberal politics. For African environmental movements considering RoN, this suggests that legal innovation may require strong civil society and political will, not just ecological need.
All papers are open access. Explore more Law research on FRELIP · discover open scholarship at frelip.org and search 36,000+ open works at search.frelip.org. FRELIP — born in Nigeria, built for African scholarship, serving the world.