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Being a home to more than 80 ethnic groups, Ethiopia has to balance normative diversity with efforts to implement state law across its territory.
This volume explores the co-existence of state, customary, and religious legal forums from the perspective of legal practitioners and local justice seekers. It shows how the various stakeholders' use of negotiation, and their strategic application of law can lead to unwanted confusion, but also to sustainable conflict resolution, innovative new procedures and hybrid norms. The book thus generates important knowledge on the conditions necessary for stimulating a cooperative co-existence of different legal systems.
Susanne Epple (PhD), born in 1968, is a social anthropologist and research affiliate at the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt/Main. She has undertaken extensive fieldwork in Southern Ethiopia for 25 years, and has taught and published extensively on issues related to gender and age in agropastoral societies, cultural contact and change, hereditary status groups, and legal pluralism.
Getachew Assefa (PhD), born in 1973, is associate professor of law at Addis Ababa University. He has published widely on issues related to minority rights, federalism and constitutional litigation, and legal pluralism. His areas of interest include comparative constitutional law and federalism, human rights, traditional governance and justice systems, as well as law and religion.
Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
Acknowledgements 9
1. Introduction 11
2. Towards widening the constitutional space for customary justice systems in Ethiopia 43
3. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and African Societies 63
4. Understanding customary laws in the context of legal pluralism 71
5. The handling of homicide in the context of legal pluralism 97
6. The interplay of customary and formal legal systems among the Tulama Oromo 115
7. Federal Sharia Courts in Addis Ababa 139
8. Use and abuse of 'the right to consent' 163
9. Local strategies to maintain cultural integrity 187
10. Legal pluralism and Protestant Christianity 213
11. Kontract: A hybrid form of law among the Sidama 235
12. Legal pluralism and emerging legal hybridity 263
13. A matter perspective: Of transfers, switching, and cross-cutting legal procedures 283
14. When parallel justice systems lack mutual recognition 311
15. Combatting infanticide in Bashada and Hamar 339
16. Clashing values 371
Glossary 399
Contributors 409