Book Description

One of the basic problems of emerging nations is how to determine what factors are involved in the process of change in modernizing the legal system using customary law as the basis. How do old rules become obsolete and new rules institutionalized? In which domains of litigation do legal concepts, based on principles of Western jurisprudence, become relevant? In which domains of litigation do indigenous rules on non-Western customary law persist? In the more than fifty tribes of Kenya, customary law fulfills an extremely important function in settling contemporary civil disputes. Changes in a system of customary law are the consequences of many different factors; however, this study emphasizes those changes that the indigenous customary law has itself generated in adapting to changing socioeconomic conditions. In addition, the study looks for changes in the customary law attributable to the influence of the ideas and procedures inherent in British law. The Kipsigis tribe of west central Kenya is the model for this study of the rapidly changing culture of Kenya. Formerly under British rule, it has evolved trom a pastoral economy to one based on mixed farming--with a resulting change in the legal system from imprecise statements of custom to legal statements of ever greater precision.