A GOVERNMENT IS AN INSTRUMENT OF OPPRESSION, GOVERNMENTS USE LAW TO CLING/CONSOLIDATE (TO) POWER, SO IWEJE MTU ALIYEONGOZA INSTRUMENT OF OPPRESSION ATANGAZWE MTAKATIFU? NAOMBA KANISA LINIJIBU. ARCHBISHOP RUWAICHI, SOMA KITABU CHA MWIJAGE UONE ATROCITIES ALIZOZIFANYA NYERERE JULIUS
Law: instrument of oppression or tool of justice?
Fernanda Pirie, Professor of the Anthropology of Law
Laws can be harsh, exclusionary, and oppressive. Authoritarian rulers use them to entrench power and undermine human rights; and they manipulate courts and judges to support undemocratic and illegitimate activities. We only have to consider the Jim Crow laws in the US, which legalized racial segregation for decades, the legal regime of apartheid South Africa, and recent moves in Russian and eastern Europe to undermine the independent judiciary. So why do people continue to place faith in the rule of law? The UN declares it to be fundamental to international peace, economic progress, and the protection of fundamental freedoms; social movements take political battles to the courts; and human rights are enshrined in ever more ambitious legal conventions.
Is law fundamentally an instrument of oppression or a tool of justice? And how can it, in practice, be and do both? In my new book, The Rule of Laws, I go back to the origins of law in Babylon, India, and Rome to ask what history can teach us about this paradox. It turns out that laws have been and done contradictory things since they were first invented by the warlords who competed for power in the Fertile Crescent almost four thousand years ago.
NYERERE WAS GOOD, BUT NOT AN ANGEL TO BE DECLARED A SAINT