This is an examination of the circumstances in which, according to legal authorities, land may become family land in the customary law of Ghana.3 There may occasionally be difficulty in discovering whether the acquisition was by a wider family or by a branch (or segment) of it, since each such smaller group constitutes a “family” for different purposes. Normally, however, the circumstances give a clear answer, and difficulties on this point rarely reach the courts. If, for example, the narrower family lived in a different part of the country, or acted in the transaction through its own head rather than the overall head, or was already regarded by members of the other branches as a separate entity conducting its own affairs, the acquisition will accrue to this smaller family. The only serious difficulties in this respect have occurred when the acquisition was by intestate succession, a means which will not be discussed in detail. Therefore the distinction drawn by Sarbah4 between “ancestral property” and “family property” will not be followed here.

In 1959 a Fundamental Rights Chapter was included, for reasons which are wjdely known,1 in the Constitution of the Federation of Nigeria.2 While the number of reported decisions directly involving that Chapter of the Constitution is as yet relatively small, it seems desirable to discover the approach which the courts have taken in such cases. It appears that little thought is being given in Nigeria to the manner in which the courts do, or should, treat fundamental rights cases. Many persons, in the tradition of Ivor Jennings, discount altogether the value of having fundamental rights provisions in the Constitution. Further battle with such persons is useless, for the provisions are in the Constitution; the question is no longer whether they should be there, but is rather what use should be made of them. This latter problem is not one for judges alone, though they bear the immediate brunt of meeting it. It is a problem for lawyers, law teachers and students, political scientists, indeed for society as a whole; and it must be given some more or less satisfactory answers if the courts are to play the part which the Constitution obviously intends they should play.

This is partly a comment on Professor David's views as expressed in “A Civil Code for Ethiopia: Considerations on the Codification of the Civil Law in African Countries”, in the Tulane Law Review of February 1963. Such comment will develop this writer's views as set forth in the Journal of Ethiopian Studies, No. 1 (1963) s.v. “A New Legislative Approach to Custom: the ‘Repeals’ Provision of the Ethiopian Civil Code of 1960”.