50 Years of Legal Education in Ethiopia

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Stanley Fisher discusses his experience as one of the early members of the Haile Selassie I University (H.S.I.U.), Law Faculty in Ethiopia.

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Stanley Fisher discusses his experience as one of the early members of the Haile Selassie I University (H.S.I.U.), Law Faculty in Ethiopia.

Image courtesy of interviewee. April 18, 2024

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This video video recounts the journey of a law educator who, after studying law in the United States, became interested in Africa, particularly Ethiopia. Initially starting his journey in East African law, he pivoted away from law school and ultimately sought opportunities in Africa. In 1962, he received a fellowship to work with the Ministry of Cooperative Development in Tanzania, but a deep desire to remain in Africa led him to Ethiopia, where he was invited to join the law faculty at a newly established law school.

The law school was part of Ethiopia's efforts in the 1950s and 60s to adopt a modern legal system with new codes in civil, penal, commercial, and criminal procedure law, distinct from the colonial past. Ethiopia had the unique circumstance of having never been fully colonized, which influenced its legal development.

The educator describes the challenges faced in establishing the law school, including a lack of local faculty qualified to teach, insufficient teaching materials, and the need to build a law library. He and the faculty comprised primarily of expatriates aimed to create a legal education system that combined both common law and civilian law traditions. Despite challenges, they produced teaching materials and resources that continued to benefit Ethiopian law students decades later.

He reflects on the long-lasting impact of this educational endeavor, noting a substantial increase in the number of law schools in Ethiopia since then and the significant role that former students have taken on in the legal field. The experiences and contributions of the expatriate faculty and Ethiopian graduates, he believes, laid a foundation for contemporary legal scholarship and practice in Ethiopia, highlighting a sense of pride and acknowledgment of their educational contributions in a complex historical context.

The narrative concludes by contrasting past challenges with current achievements in Ethiopian legal education and the importance of ongoing support for legal scholarship in the country.

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I found myself there quite accidentally.

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Uh, I was, went to law school, was educated,

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of course in the US and I was very interested in Africa.

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And as a law student, I was torn between law

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and Africa, particularly South Africa.

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Um, I ended up studying at the, in London,

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at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

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I actually left law school in the middle

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to study East African law and language and culture,

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and trying to get to Africa.

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I failed to get to Africa.

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So I went back to law school, finished law school in 1962.

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And by that time there were some fellowships available,

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excuse me, for young Americans to,

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spend a year doing something,

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constructive in Africa.

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I worked, I had a fellowship to, work for the Ministry

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of Cooperative Development in Waza.

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Tanika as it then was, at the, as my year was drawing

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to a close, I did not wanna go.

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I didn't wanna leave Africa. I was looking for other jobs.

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I had a friend who was one

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of the founding faculty members in 1963

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of the law faculty at Ali Sala,

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the first university in Saba.

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And they invited me to come and interview,

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and I got a teaching job there.

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I originally went for one year. I stayed a second.

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I stayed a third. I stayed a fourth.

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And, finally came back to the States.

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And I've been, I've then had a 50 year tea teaching

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of law career, at Boston University between 19,

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starting in 1955.

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Um, the, Ethiopia adopted a complete new set

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of laws, a new constitution in 1955.

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Uh, penal code 1957, civil code, commercial code,

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criminal procedure code between 55 and 65.

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And the reason for this, I think is interesting.

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Uh, most former colonial dependencies,

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all I guess all over the world,

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by the time they became independent,

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they already had a system of laws usually based

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almost entirely, on the legal system

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of the former colonial power.

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Ethiopia was different

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because it had been, was perhaps the only African country

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that had never been con colonized, except for the period

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of 1935

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to 41 when the Italians invaded from Eritrea.

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And then they were displaced by the British with British

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aid, militarily in 1941 or 42.

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So what Ethiopia had in the way of laws, was a mixture

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of indigenous laws.

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Uh, Italian had an Italian penal code from

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1930 when they were briefly colonized.

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They had British drafted laws

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and regulations from the, was the British.

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When they liberated Ethiopia from the Italians, they

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functioned, they filled a lot of roles in government,

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including in the judiciary and,

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and, the, ministries, Haile, ssi,

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the emperor at that time, as, as

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many African countries were becoming independent, he aspired

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that Ethiopia would play a leading role in Africa.

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Um, and on the other hand,

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the country was extremely backward, extremely poor.

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Illiteracy was widespread,

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and they didn't have laws designed to attract investment.

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Uh, they really were, you know, a backwater compared

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to most other African countries.

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So he made the decision to adopt this new constitution

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and set of laws they had never been taught before.

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Uh, and there was no law school as such.

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There was a law department in the university,

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which was taught by one person, a,

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a Polish expat named George Che Novi.

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Um, but, he decided

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to seek foreign aid to establish a new law school,

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to teach all of these new laws.

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Personally, I wanted to stay in Africa,

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and the idea of teaching sounded great.

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And, I, I went up for, an,

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an interview.

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And Ethiopia was beautiful.

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I was quite ignorant about Ethiopia.

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I knew a lot about East Africa 'cause I'd studied Swahili

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and, I, I had been prepared

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for my year in Tanika, but I was really unprepared.

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But it all seemed beautiful and exciting.

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Uh, but I wasn't comparing it with any other job.

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I mean, I had this opportunity, it looked great.

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So I took it touch Novi, I think.

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I think, so there's an interesting history

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about once the Emperor decided to form a new law school,

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that there was competition between different

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countries to run it.

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Uh, the, in the end, the Ford Foundation,

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ended up giving a large grant for the founding of it.

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And that's why we got an American law Dean, James Paul,

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who had been at the University

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of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.

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He also was completely new to Ethiopia,

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but he was interested in helping the development of law

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and legal institutions in Africa.

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Um, and, so, he was the really, the,

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the key figure in making decisions,

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and in fundraising particularly, to allow, you know,

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basically there was, it was a, it was an empty,

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slate, a clean slate, you know, what would be taught

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by whom would be taught, who would the faculty be,

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what materials would be for teaching these students.

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There were no books on Ethiopian law,

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and there were these codes,

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but their drafts of the codes were not openly available.

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They were all kind of kept secret.

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So, he had a lot of decisions to make.

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Uh, George Touch Novi was interesting,

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an important figure because unlike Jim Paul

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and virtually all the American faculty

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who were recruited at the start, George Anova was,

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trained in the continental system of law.

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Uh, I'm sure you, you're aware

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that there are basically two systems,

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to simplify it a little bit.

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Two systems of law in the world.

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Uh, there are the, legal systems that were colonized

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by the European countries,

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and they, their legal systems tended to be based,

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based on the Napoleonic code, and they had legal codes.

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And then you had countries, who, that were colonized

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by the British,

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and their laws based were based on, on Anglo,

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excuse me, on, on English common law,

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but put into codes like the Indian penal code,

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or they may lay in civil code and so forth.

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But it was basically English law.

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So the, the first question would be, you know,

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would this law school in Ethiopia teach

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like a common law law school,

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like one in Britain, in America?

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Or would it teach and approach law like,

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law school in Belgium, or in Poland,

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or, in Paris?

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Um, so Jim Paul was a common lawyer,

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but George Che Novas was a European,

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and he knew what continental

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also called civilian law.

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And you know, how, how, how you should teach and read

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and judge under a European

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Napoleonic code type of instrument.

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So to the extent we had decisions to make, which,

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which would've been decided differently in a continental law

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school or a common law, law school,

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George Church Novus was important, not only

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because of his scholarship, but also

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because he, he was a, you know, a voice

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for adapting our, performing our legal education

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to the Continental model.

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The first challenge is who will be the teachers?

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Uh, and you think it's a law school in Ethiopia.

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Um, you would get Ethiopian lawyers to teach.

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The problem was, there were only a handful of

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Ethiopians who'd been trained as lawyers

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in different countries that, not in Ethiopia,

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but some had gone to McGill, some had gone to Russia,

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and they were really needed to run the government.

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They were the, you know, the chief justice of the court

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and the Minister of Justice and so forth.

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So there basically were almost no Ethiopians

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who even on a part-time basis, could contribute

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to teaching, at the law school.

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Uh, so now you're teach, you're getting expat

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teachers, but who do you get?

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Where do you get them from?

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Do you get them from America, from France,

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from Belgium, from Canada?

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Uh, what Jim Paul did at the start was recruit Americans.

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But, and, and anyway, so that's the,

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and I can talk more about, about the problems with,

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with having Americans teach there,

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but that was the main problem of who will your faculty be?

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The second was, what about teaching materials?

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There were simply no teaching materials.

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We, you had a code, like a civil code or a penal code,

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but you knew nothing about, there were no drafters notes.

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There were no commentaries.

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The kind of legal literature which exists in every country

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in the world, every developed country was simply

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almost zero, on these new codes because they were new.

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And, so what, what do you do for teaching materials?

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Thirdly, there wasn't a law library,

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which is a law school runs on its law library.

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There was only a tiny little law law library.

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It needed to be built up,

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and we needed to fig, you needed figure out

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by getting expert advice consultants on

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what would be in the law library,

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what kind of books from where?

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Um, and,

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and I guess the, the, you know, those are the,

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were the main challenges.

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I think the, the first thing I just have

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to say something about, in, in order to decide who,

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who will teach what background they need

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and what should be in the library, you need to know

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what kind of law they're teaching.

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Uh, and that goes back to the, to the drafting

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of these codes and who drafted them.

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Uh, ha Sesi was an expert

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at balancing out the influence of different countries,

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different developed countries.

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He, he was careful not to be too dependent on the British

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or the American, or the French,

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or the, the Italians who had a history there.

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Um, so he, formed a, a codification commission

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of Ethiopians

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and of figures in the judiciary

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who came from different countries.

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Um, and they selected a mixture

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of experts to draft the code.

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So if you have a Frenchman draft the code, he's going

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to give you something like the French code.

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And if you have an American

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or a Britisher,

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they're gonna give you something like the Malian code

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or the Indian Code.

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Um, and so what happened is the,

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the penal code was draft drafted by a Swiss, the, you know,

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these are eminent experts, the civil code by a Frenchman,

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the Maritime Code,

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I'm not sure the criminal procedure code

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started out being drafted.

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And that was the one I ended up teaching.

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That was my, my job, that was drafted at the first draft

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was by a Swiss,

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but they were unhappy with the, with that code,

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because having had the British there for a long time,

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influencing the courts, he,

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he was picking a very civil law,

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you know, type of procedure.

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So they decided to, to, to reject his draft

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and turn it over to a former judge from Elea,

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named Charles or Charles Matthew.

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And he finished the draft.

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But, so, so you had this mixture of,

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of, of codes.

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Um, this caused a lot of problems in, in my case,

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because I was, well,

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for the codes that were drafted by continental experts,

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you wanted, if you were gonna hire a common lawyer,

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you needed one who had some knowledge

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and expertise of civil law.

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So one thing that, that,

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with this Ford Foundation money, Dean Paul hired

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some young Americans

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who had some experience in comparative law.

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Uh, one of my colleagues,

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after he graduated law school in America, was financed

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to spend a year in Montpelier.

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And he got a degree in comparative law

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and, you know, new, new French and so forth.

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Um, what he also did was reach out to recruit faculty

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from countries where he could find lawyers,

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civilian lawyers, who could teach in English,

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which is always easy.

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So some of them, we ended up with a real,

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very wide variety

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of nationalities teaching in the law school from America,

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France, Belgium, Canada, Scotland, Finland.

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Um, and so that's a major thing that he did.

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Um, in terms

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of teaching materials, the solution, which

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because of this Ford Foundation funding

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and other funding, each

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faculty member was given only one course to teach.

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So we had a very low student teacher, ratio,

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and we had expected to produce teaching materials, many

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of which ended up being published so

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that they would be there for the future.

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Uh, for example, I received funding, excuse me, to go

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to England, and I spent a year, excuse me, a semester at,

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at the, Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in,

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in London to, to, research the sources

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of the criminal procedure code.

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And I ended up publishing a book in 1969, which is

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basically a, a, a book of teaching materials

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for the criminal procedure code,

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which is still being used today, 60 years later.

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Uh, I'm sorry to say, it's still being used.

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There should be new books,

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but we had all this research money

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and they could afford to send me to England,

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and they could afford to allow,

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let me teach one course for the first year.

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Uh, the Ethiopian faculty that is now in,

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in the law schools there, they don't have that kind

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of funding, and they haven't been able to get the support

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to do scholarship to create new books.

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I mean, there are some, but you know, it's been difficult.

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Um, in terms of the law library,

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Jim Paul was able to get funding from the foundation

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and elsewhere to get a American

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and English law librarians to come and act as consultants.

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We ended up hiring an English

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law librarian, for a year or two.

16:38.895 --> 16:41.995
Uh, a big part of his job was fundraising

16:42.615 --> 16:44.075
beyond the Ford Foundation,

16:44.495 --> 16:46.115
but getting government assistance

16:47.025 --> 16:48.795
from Great Britain and other countries.

16:49.585 --> 16:53.165
Um, and the, one thing I haven't mentioned the last

16:54.165 --> 16:56.385
one on, on this point I will, is

16:56.385 --> 16:59.665
that even though we had continental law teachers

17:00.165 --> 17:03.425
and American, you know, civil, common law teachers,

17:04.525 --> 17:07.425
nobody on the faculty really, almost nobody

17:07.935 --> 17:12.345
knew anything about Ethiopian language, customs, you know,

17:13.615 --> 17:14.625
traditional law.

17:15.285 --> 17:19.415
Um, and, that,

17:19.415 --> 17:23.695
that was a major problem with having expat law faculty.

17:24.515 --> 17:28.615
Uh, and this was dealt with, I think in large part by

17:29.175 --> 17:32.415
establishing a faculty research grant program.

17:33.035 --> 17:37.095
So I could hire two or three students to do research for me.

17:37.735 --> 17:40.815
I was doing research on traditional criminal procedure.

17:41.235 --> 17:44.815
Two of my students, started a radio program

17:45.355 --> 17:49.765
on traditional legal, traditional criminal procedure

17:50.385 --> 17:54.125
in Ethiopia, and encouraging people to call in

17:54.395 --> 17:55.405
with their experiences.

17:55.795 --> 17:57.725
They published columns in the newspaper.

17:58.065 --> 18:02.765
So, and our students all had to do empirical legal research

18:02.825 --> 18:04.485
as part of their courses.

18:04.785 --> 18:08.325
So I'd have a student go interview judges,

18:08.565 --> 18:12.125
a about their bail practices or interview judges

18:12.665 --> 18:16.485
and observe when did counsel get appointed

18:16.625 --> 18:18.965
for indigents in the, in the high court.

18:19.465 --> 18:20.845
So their research

18:20.985 --> 18:25.645
and their assistance helped fill this gap of our ignorance,

18:25.985 --> 18:29.765
of our, the fact that we didn't have, most of us, except

18:29.765 --> 18:32.605
for the Peace Corps volunteers who, who knew they were going

18:32.745 --> 18:34.885
to Ethiopia and got language training

18:34.905 --> 18:37.005
and culture training before they came.

18:37.345 --> 18:38.605
But we only had a few of those.

18:39.065 --> 18:42.365
Uh, the, the, our students,

18:42.745 --> 18:44.605
picked up the gap on this.

18:45.105 --> 18:48.205
And I, I guess I also will mention,

18:48.595 --> 18:51.205
when we talked about the kinds of decisions

18:52.595 --> 18:55.685
that Dean Paul had to make is whether

18:56.855 --> 19:00.625
legal instruction would be full-time only, full-time,

19:00.625 --> 19:01.945
which is the American model.

19:02.195 --> 19:05.185
There, there, traditionally, traditionally, it is very hard

19:05.185 --> 19:08.025
to find a law school that will let you work during the day

19:08.405 --> 19:09.425
and just go at night.

19:09.885 --> 19:11.905
Uh, usually you have to be a full-time student.

19:12.005 --> 19:14.465
That's the tradition. It's not universal.

19:15.045 --> 19:18.985
Um, but we had an existing legal system out there

19:19.795 --> 19:21.665
under, you know, from before the codes.

19:21.665 --> 19:24.705
We had judges, we had lawyers, we had,

19:24.705 --> 19:26.865
people in the Ministry of Justice,

19:27.885 --> 19:31.465
and, they had never been trained in law.

19:31.965 --> 19:34.785
So the decision was made not only, you know,

19:34.785 --> 19:36.425
we had three levels of instruction.

19:36.805 --> 19:38.825
We had LLB instruction,

19:39.325 --> 19:41.425
and we had day students who,

19:41.495 --> 19:43.025
that was their full-time program.

19:43.525 --> 19:44.825
And then we had night students,

19:45.165 --> 19:46.905
people working in the system.

19:47.415 --> 19:50.665
Many very high officials are holding important jobs

19:50.845 --> 19:54.385
as lawyers, you know, for foreign companies in Ethiopia.

19:54.815 --> 19:56.825
They could get the LLB at night.

19:57.615 --> 20:01.275
And then we had, a diploma program,

20:01.965 --> 20:03.835
which was taught in Amharic,

20:04.535 --> 20:06.115
and we had a certificate program,

20:06.555 --> 20:09.035
I guess the diploma program, partly in Amharic,

20:09.135 --> 20:12.715
partly in English, which also were nighttime programs.

20:13.215 --> 20:15.955
And they were taught not only in Saba,

20:16.175 --> 20:19.555
but also in Osma, the capital of Eritrea,

20:19.925 --> 20:22.275
which was then a part of Ethiopia.

20:23.055 --> 20:27.595
So there was a real effort to bring legal education to the

20:28.135 --> 20:31.515
people functioning in the legal system who'd never had the

20:31.515 --> 20:34.595
benefit that certainly they might have had some training,

20:34.975 --> 20:37.195
but not in the new codes and the,

20:37.455 --> 20:39.995
and the new, you know, bill of rights in the Constitution,

20:40.535 --> 20:42.515
because this is all new stuff.

20:43.375 --> 20:44.395
How did you staff that?

20:44.535 --> 20:47.035
How did you staff that with such a sort of a, not primitive,

20:47.085 --> 20:48.245
but such a small staff team

20:48.245 --> 20:50.325
to do the day work and the night work?

20:50.325 --> 20:51.645
What? Did you have loads of staff?

20:52.105 --> 20:54.125
Uh, well, I, you know, again, each

20:54.125 --> 20:58.245
of the full-time faculty had only one course to teach.

20:58.665 --> 21:01.525
So I was teaching my day students criminal procedure,

21:01.545 --> 21:04.805
and then a night I was teaching my night LLB students.

21:05.115 --> 21:07.485
Yeah. So, I, I had,

21:07.955 --> 21:11.165
because I'm a Pac Rat, I had saved a lot

21:11.165 --> 21:15.485
of documents when I left, Ethiopia over the past,

21:16.025 --> 21:17.325
what's now 60 years.

21:17.905 --> 21:21.285
Um, and well, one of the, the, the, documents

21:21.355 --> 21:25.325
that I had saved was a student newspaper,

21:25.545 --> 21:27.285
law student newspaper called The Balance

21:27.345 --> 21:28.725
And, and, and the Sword.

21:29.345 --> 21:33.845
Um, and, was interesting to me looking back,

21:34.025 --> 21:37.685
it was actually on the 50th anniversary of the founding

21:37.785 --> 21:39.925
of the law school in 2013.

21:40.885 --> 21:44.085
I happened to be in Ethiopia, as a tourist,

21:44.105 --> 21:45.725
and I was invited to give a talk

21:46.305 --> 21:47.965
on the founding of the law school.

21:47.985 --> 21:52.685
And, and that's what what I wrote up became this,

21:53.355 --> 21:56.765
this piece on, a memoir,

21:56.855 --> 21:58.325
50 years of legal education.

21:58.705 --> 22:00.925
So I had that with me, and I was able to,

22:01.545 --> 22:04.805
to look back at the, at what the students had been writing.

22:05.425 --> 22:07.925
Um, so it was extremely interesting.

22:08.705 --> 22:12.405
One, one was by the only female student that,

22:12.515 --> 22:13.885
that we had in the law school.

22:14.425 --> 22:17.685
Uh, she was, ethnically Greek

22:18.315 --> 22:20.285
from a Greek community in a ababa.

22:20.785 --> 22:24.325
Um, and she wrote an article, a piece for the Balance

22:24.345 --> 22:27.805
and the sword saying, talking about the challenges

22:28.185 --> 22:31.645
of being the o as she said, the only girl in the law school,

22:32.025 --> 22:33.805
you know, and why is she there?

22:34.185 --> 22:37.125
Uh, it was a pleasure for me in 2013

22:37.635 --> 22:41.205
when I gave this lecture to see that, about a third

22:41.745 --> 22:45.045
or more of this law students in the room were women.

22:45.345 --> 22:47.205
So that has changed radically.

22:47.665 --> 22:49.325
And I recently spoke to this,

22:49.955 --> 22:54.245
this only girl in the law school from, the 1960s.

22:54.465 --> 22:59.365
She now heads, a large law firm in Nairobi,

22:59.365 --> 23:02.765
Kenya with,

23:03.605 --> 23:06.125
a client list, including the World Bank

23:06.465 --> 23:08.165
and all these leading institutions.

23:08.865 --> 23:11.645
So, it, it, it, it, you know, it's,

23:11.875 --> 23:12.925
it's just great to see that.

23:13.545 --> 23:17.345
Uh, and she told me that with excluding her,

23:17.345 --> 23:20.625
there are four other female lawyers in the firm,

23:20.765 --> 23:22.825
and I asked her, she was the only girl

23:22.875 --> 23:24.505
still, and she said no.

23:25.085 --> 23:26.625
Um, so a,

23:27.305 --> 23:30.905
a second item from the student publication was an account

23:31.405 --> 23:32.705
of our students.

23:33.485 --> 23:38.145
You know, they say that Ethiopians are naturally litigious.

23:38.585 --> 23:41.905
I mean, if you read old traveler accounts of, you know,

23:42.565 --> 23:47.285
Greece or, anthropologists who traveled

23:47.285 --> 23:50.365
through Ethiopia in the 17th century, the 18th century,

23:50.715 --> 23:53.885
they talked, they described legal proceedings in which the

23:54.245 --> 23:57.485
advocates who, of course, lay advocates, you know, they

23:58.315 --> 24:02.445
very prominent lay role in, in the, in legal system.

24:02.945 --> 24:05.725
Uh, so our students were extremely litigious.

24:05.725 --> 24:07.565
They, they immediately,

24:07.875 --> 24:10.485
even though they hadn't graduated, they

24:10.995 --> 24:13.805
were active in bringing lawsuits

24:14.425 --> 24:16.285
to change things they didn't like.

24:16.785 --> 24:20.885
Uh, and so there was a program of university service

24:21.625 --> 24:23.805
at the university, which was tightly controlled

24:23.805 --> 24:27.365
by the government, to require all of the students

24:27.465 --> 24:31.045
to spend, whether it was their summer times or a year

24:31.045 --> 24:32.645
after school, I can't recall,

24:32.865 --> 24:34.605
but they had to go out in the countryside

24:35.025 --> 24:37.125
and, you know, do all kinds of work,

24:37.495 --> 24:39.285
which they were not happy doing.

24:39.945 --> 24:43.605
And our students brought a court case, arguing

24:43.875 --> 24:47.445
that the law university had no authority

24:48.105 --> 24:51.365
to require students to engage in national service.

24:51.645 --> 24:54.725
I understand this lawsuit ended up,

24:55.145 --> 24:58.445
I'm not surprised being decided against the law students.

24:58.945 --> 25:00.045
Uh, but the fact

25:00.045 --> 25:02.405
that they brought it was, I think, extraordinary.

25:02.665 --> 25:04.925
And the third thing that, article in

25:04.925 --> 25:07.405
that newspaper student paper I read,

25:08.025 --> 25:11.405
was the students taking the initiative to try

25:11.705 --> 25:16.085
and, raise money to establish,

25:16.315 --> 25:20.365
dormitories and di dining facilities for law students,

25:20.365 --> 25:22.005
something called Law House.

25:22.665 --> 25:25.645
Uh, which, you know, they planned it all out,

25:25.705 --> 25:28.205
how many beds there would be, kitchen, dining room,

25:28.205 --> 25:30.645
and so, so forth place for students to study,

25:30.715 --> 25:34.615
because the students from, from who lived in ABA boat,

25:35.125 --> 25:36.415
they could commute easily,

25:36.955 --> 25:40.175
but students who lived out in the boondocks,

25:40.195 --> 25:43.575
it was very difficult for them to find a place to, to live

25:43.995 --> 25:46.215
and food to eat when they were studying law.

25:46.635 --> 25:48.935
And, you know, we, we felt that law study

25:49.075 --> 25:52.375
and they felt should be a full-time occupation.

25:52.595 --> 25:56.255
And, so the law house also never got funded.

25:56.555 --> 25:57.615
It still doesn't exist.

25:58.155 --> 26:02.535
But these were signs of student activism, which were,

26:02.855 --> 26:04.855
I think, heartwarming.

26:05.335 --> 26:09.695
I, I had the feeling particularly, I mean, in 1974,

26:09.695 --> 26:11.815
highly sesi, there was a military coup.

26:12.035 --> 26:15.695
Highly SSI was assassinated after a period of time.

26:16.275 --> 26:18.375
And there was a communist military

26:18.975 --> 26:22.495
dictatorship called the dur under the leadership of,

26:22.605 --> 26:27.455
Colonel Mengistu Ha Merriam, who was supported

26:27.455 --> 26:30.495
by the Russians, in, in all respects,

26:31.355 --> 26:33.665
they took power.

26:34.165 --> 26:35.185
And this was shortly

26:35.195 --> 26:39.065
after I had left Ethiopia, you know, five years or so.

26:39.645 --> 26:42.225
Um, and I, I had the feeling, I think many

26:42.225 --> 26:44.525
of us had the feeling that everything we had

26:44.525 --> 26:45.685
done was gone to ruin.

26:45.955 --> 26:48.645
Because a lot of our students who were, you know,

26:48.645 --> 26:51.725
lawyers in the legal system, challenging the government,

26:52.385 --> 26:55.285
you know, who were articulating, you know, the right

26:55.285 --> 26:58.565
to habeas corpus and all that stuff, they were imprisoned.

26:59.115 --> 27:03.925
Many were killed. Uh, many, left the country

27:04.465 --> 27:07.565
and were working as taxi cab drivers in Washington

27:07.825 --> 27:09.125
DC and probably in London.

27:09.325 --> 27:11.725
I don't know. So there was a real question about

27:12.385 --> 27:14.925
the lasting value of anything we had done.

27:15.405 --> 27:16.645
'cause the di changed the laws

27:17.185 --> 27:19.205
and, you know, all the things

27:19.205 --> 27:21.125
that we had done, what good were they?

27:21.625 --> 27:23.325
But a couple of things happened.

27:23.865 --> 27:28.725
Um, one is that the, eventually the dur

27:29.625 --> 27:34.165
was, overthrown in the early nineties by, a,

27:34.285 --> 27:38.885
a long, rebellion,

27:39.035 --> 27:42.205
from by the Northerners in Eritrea and Tigray.

27:42.625 --> 27:46.805
Uh, and secondly, the legal education really

27:47.165 --> 27:48.445
expanded in Ethiopia.

27:49.225 --> 27:52.005
Um, when I was there, the population

27:52.005 --> 27:53.765
of Ethiopia was 35 million.

27:54.465 --> 27:57.925
Uh, I looked up this morning, the population is given

27:58.305 --> 28:02.445
as 120 million, so the population is quadrupled.

28:02.755 --> 28:04.445
When I was there, we had one law school.

28:05.145 --> 28:06.605
Now there are 30 law schools.

28:07.265 --> 28:10.485
Um, and I know you asked about the contributions

28:10.485 --> 28:11.485
of Ethiopian lawyers.

28:11.925 --> 28:15.205
I mean, I'll just say that the, the, the materials that

28:15.745 --> 28:20.615
we wrote and published in the 1960s

28:21.555 --> 28:25.415
are being speaking for myself, they're now being studied

28:26.155 --> 28:28.175
in the law schools every month.

28:28.715 --> 28:33.575
Um, this past month in, in, Jan, February, I guess,

28:33.575 --> 28:38.335
twenty twenty four, a hundred and fifty downloads of works,

28:38.365 --> 28:41.655
that scholarly articles I wrote in criminal procedure

28:42.505 --> 28:45.935
60 years ago, 55 years ago, are being taught.

28:46.395 --> 28:47.975
So the, the, the work

28:47.975 --> 28:51.695
that the expats did has had a new life.

28:52.315 --> 28:57.295
Uh, secondly, our former students have, of course,

28:57.295 --> 29:00.615
the law school was soon after the expats left.

29:01.075 --> 29:04.175
The law school faculty was all Ethiopian eyes.

29:04.595 --> 29:06.895
So they're all Ethiopians who are former students,

29:07.275 --> 29:10.695
and many of them are engaged in scholarship.

29:10.925 --> 29:13.695
They don't have the financial support that we have,

29:13.875 --> 29:15.335
but there are publishing books.

29:15.775 --> 29:18.975
I have a former student who was imprisoned

29:18.975 --> 29:21.015
for seven years under the dur.

29:21.435 --> 29:24.335
And while in prison, he interviewed other prisoners

29:24.715 --> 29:27.215
and ended up writing in publishing a legal

29:27.215 --> 29:28.255
history of Ethiopia.

29:28.955 --> 29:31.855
Um, and that's just one example, you know,

29:31.955 --> 29:33.095
so it's a pleasure.

29:33.115 --> 29:36.455
Now I'm in touch with people who, I've been back

29:36.455 --> 29:39.735
to the law school several times, including most recently,

29:39.795 --> 29:40.975
2013.

29:41.705 --> 29:44.805
And the our graduates are now teaching

29:45.065 --> 29:46.485
and producing scholarship,

29:46.865 --> 29:50.445
and I think it's of a very high quality, of course,

29:50.805 --> 29:54.085
a lot, you know, a lot of them also have immigrated

29:54.305 --> 29:56.725
to other countries, but they're doing scholarship on

29:57.005 --> 30:00.805
Ethiopian law from America, from Europe, or whatever.

30:01.265 --> 30:06.125
So I, I feel that the work that we did, I now feel,

30:06.705 --> 30:10.885
formed a foundation for, contemporary,

30:11.945 --> 30:15.445
legal scholarship in Ethiopia.

30:15.705 --> 30:18.845
And it really, as I say, it's, to me,

30:18.845 --> 30:20.605
it feels like a second life

30:20.975 --> 30:24.605
after this terrible, terrible, terrible torture

30:24.745 --> 30:27.885
and death in, in the 1970s and eighties.

30:28.385 --> 30:29.685
In, in contemporary times.

30:29.685 --> 30:34.615
There are certainly some, people who are very

30:35.695 --> 30:38.095
negative, or at least partially negative

30:38.625 --> 30:42.495
about the whole project of expat Americans

30:43.035 --> 30:45.535
coming in, you know, without,

30:45.535 --> 30:48.695
with hardly any Ethiopian participation,

30:48.955 --> 30:53.375
and, setting up a law school and deciding what to teach.

30:54.215 --> 30:56.615
I mean, I've, I've had was interviewed by a,

30:56.895 --> 31:01.415
a doctoral student at Harvard getting his doctorate,

31:01.555 --> 31:05.735
in law, who was, suggesting

31:05.735 --> 31:07.975
that maybe we were a CIA plant,

31:08.435 --> 31:09.855
and that's what we were really doing there.

31:10.355 --> 31:14.975
Um, you know, there, there I think very different standards.

31:15.115 --> 31:19.825
And there have been, I,

31:20.065 --> 31:24.865
I think questioning of the value of our, of the adoption

31:24.865 --> 31:27.385
of all these foreign legal codes in Ethiopia,

31:27.725 --> 31:28.985
and then, which we didn't do,

31:29.245 --> 31:32.425
but then our participation in teaching them

31:32.765 --> 31:36.865
and, sort of spreading these foreign legal,

31:37.565 --> 31:38.785
doctrines.

31:39.285 --> 31:43.545
So, I mean, I, I, I've, I'm, I'm not,

31:44.395 --> 31:45.895
convinced by that argument.

31:46.115 --> 31:48.415
Um, but, it,

31:49.745 --> 31:53.095
there certainly was a huge problem when we had all our

31:53.375 --> 31:55.135
teachers who didn't know the country,

31:55.635 --> 31:58.135
who didn't speak the language,

31:59.155 --> 32:02.415
and trying to, to, you know, patch things

32:02.415 --> 32:03.615
through to teach the codes.

32:04.195 --> 32:08.695
Uh, but all, all in all, I've come to feel extremely proud

32:09.315 --> 32:13.375
of the positive size, which is that I think we've trained

32:14.095 --> 32:18.935
a lot of people who, like the, this, the young woman,

32:19.195 --> 32:22.935
the only woman in our class who is now a major,

32:23.355 --> 32:28.015
is a major role in, in, economic development

32:28.755 --> 32:31.615
in Kenya and further in East Africa at least.

32:32.075 --> 32:36.535
Uh, you know, I think, I think we, we worked hard

32:36.595 --> 32:39.485
and were very well supported, and that was, was a blessing.

32:40.025 --> 32:44.355
Uh, I wish the current law school,

32:46.055 --> 32:50.355
faculty could get a big grant from, from the states

32:50.415 --> 32:51.555
or, or France.

32:51.945 --> 32:53.635
They get little ones instead.

32:54.055 --> 32:58.955
So, but I, I think it was a very, it had very large impact,

32:59.535 --> 33:02.155
and I think it, it, it had a very positive impact.

Journey to Ethiopia: A Law Career Begins

00:00:00 - I found myself there quite accidentally. I was, went to law school, was educated, of course in the US and I was very interested in Africa. And as a law student, I was torn between law and Africa, particularly South Africa. I ended up studying at the, in London, at the School of Oriental and African Studies. I actually left law school in the middle
00:00:34 - and trying to get to Africa. I failed to get to Africa. So I went back to law school, finished law school in 1962. And by that time there were some fellowships available, excuse me, for young Americans to, spend a year doing something, constructive in Africa. I worked, I had a fellowship to, work for the Ministry
00:01:07 - Tanika as it then was, at the, as my year was drawing to a close, I did not wanna go. I didn't wanna leave Africa. I was looking for other jobs. I had a friend who was one of the founding faculty members in 1963 of the law faculty at Ali Sala, the first university in Saba. And they invited me to come and interview,
00:01:37 - I originally went for one year. I stayed a second. I stayed a third. I stayed a fourth. And, finally came back to the States. And I've been, I've then had a 50 year tea teaching of law career, at Boston University between 19, starting in 1955. the, Ethiopia adopted a complete new set of laws, a new constitution in 1955.
00:02:12 - criminal procedure code between 55 and 65. And the reason for this, I think is interesting. most former colonial dependencies, all I guess all over the world, by the time they became independent, they already had a system of laws usually based almost entirely, on the legal system of the former colonial power.
00:02:40 - because it had been, was perhaps the only African country that had never been con colonized, except for the period of 1935 to 41 when the Italians invaded from Eritrea. And then they were displaced by the British with British aid, militarily in 1941 or 42. So what Ethiopia had in the way of laws, was a mixture

Ethiopia's Legal Evolution and Educational Challenges

00:03:13 - Italian had an Italian penal code from 1930 when they were briefly colonized. They had British drafted laws and regulations from the, was the British. When they liberated Ethiopia from the Italians, they functioned, they filled a lot of roles in government, including in the judiciary and, and, the, ministries, Haile, ssi, the emperor at that time, as, as
00:03:50 - that Ethiopia would play a leading role in Africa. and on the other hand, the country was extremely backward, extremely poor. Illiteracy was widespread, and they didn't have laws designed to attract investment. they really were, you know, a backwater compared to most other African countries. So he made the decision to adopt this new constitution
00:04:22 - and there was no law school as such. There was a law department in the university, which was taught by one person, a, a Polish expat named George Che Novi. but, he decided to seek foreign aid to establish a new law school, to teach all of these new laws. Personally, I wanted to stay in Africa,
00:04:53 - And, I, I went up for, an, an interview. And Ethiopia was beautiful. I was quite ignorant about Ethiopia. I knew a lot about East Africa 'cause I'd studied Swahili and, I, I had been prepared for my year in Tanika, but I was really unprepared. But it all seemed beautiful and exciting. but I wasn't comparing it with any other job. I mean, I had this opportunity, it looked great.
00:05:26 - I think, so there's an interesting history about once the Emperor decided to form a new law school, that there was competition between different countries to run it. the, in the end, the Ford Foundation, ended up giving a large grant for the founding of it. And that's why we got an American law Dean, James Paul,
00:05:56 - of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. He also was completely new to Ethiopia, but he was interested in helping the development of law and legal institutions in Africa. and, so, he was the really, the, the key figure in making decisions, and in fundraising particularly, to allow, you know, basically there was, it was a, it was an empty,

Challenges in Establishing Ethiopian Legal Education

00:06:28 - by whom would be taught, who would the faculty be, what materials would be for teaching these students. There were no books on Ethiopian law, and there were these codes, but their drafts of the codes were not openly available. They were all kind of kept secret. So, he had a lot of decisions to make. George Touch Novi was interesting, an important figure because unlike Jim Paul
00:07:01 - who were recruited at the start, George Anova was, trained in the continental system of law. I'm sure you, you're aware that there are basically two systems, to simplify it a little bit. Two systems of law in the world. there are the, legal systems that were colonized by the European countries, and they, their legal systems tended to be based,
00:07:34 - And then you had countries, who, that were colonized by the British, and their laws based were based on, on Anglo, excuse me, on, on English common law, but put into codes like the Indian penal code, or they may lay in civil code and so forth. But it was basically English law. So the, the first question would be, you know,
00:08:04 - like a common law law school, like one in Britain, in America? Or would it teach and approach law like, law school in Belgium, or in Poland, or, in Paris? so Jim Paul was a common lawyer, but George Che Novas was a European, and he knew what continental also called civilian law.
00:08:34 - and judge under a European Napoleonic code type of instrument. So to the extent we had decisions to make, which, which would've been decided differently in a continental law school or a common law, law school, George Church Novus was important, not only because of his scholarship, but also because he, he was a, you know, a voice
00:09:06 - to the Continental model. The first challenge is who will be the teachers? and you think it's a law school in Ethiopia. you would get Ethiopian lawyers to teach. The problem was, there were only a handful of Ethiopians who'd been trained as lawyers in different countries that, not in Ethiopia, but some had gone to McGill, some had gone to Russia, and they were really needed to run the government.

Challenges in Establishing Ethiopia's Law School

00:09:37 - and the Minister of Justice and so forth. So there basically were almost no Ethiopians who even on a part-time basis, could contribute to teaching, at the law school. so now you're teach, you're getting expat teachers, but who do you get? Where do you get them from? Do you get them from America, from France, from Belgium, from Canada? what Jim Paul did at the start was recruit Americans.
00:10:08 - and I can talk more about, about the problems with, with having Americans teach there, but that was the main problem of who will your faculty be? The second was, what about teaching materials? There were simply no teaching materials. We, you had a code, like a civil code or a penal code, but you knew nothing about, there were no drafters notes. There were no commentaries. The kind of legal literature which exists in every country
00:10:39 - almost zero, on these new codes because they were new. And, so what, what do you do for teaching materials? Thirdly, there wasn't a law library, which is a law school runs on its law library. There was only a tiny little law law library. It needed to be built up, and we needed to fig, you needed figure out by getting expert advice consultants on what would be in the law library, what kind of books from where?
00:11:08 - and I guess the, the, you know, those are the, were the main challenges. I think the, the first thing I just have to say something about, in, in order to decide who, who will teach what background they need and what should be in the library, you need to know what kind of law they're teaching. and that goes back to the, to the drafting of these codes and who drafted them. ha Sesi was an expert at balancing out the influence of different countries,
00:11:41 - He, he was careful not to be too dependent on the British or the American, or the French, or the, the Italians who had a history there. so he, formed a, a codification commission of Ethiopians and of figures in the judiciary who came from different countries. and they selected a mixture of experts to draft the code. So if you have a Frenchman draft the code, he's going
00:12:14 - And if you have an American or a Britisher, they're gonna give you something like the Malian code or the Indian Code. and so what happened is the, the penal code was draft drafted by a Swiss, the, you know, these are eminent experts, the civil code by a Frenchman, the Maritime Code, I'm not sure the criminal procedure code started out being drafted. And that was the one I ended up teaching. That was my, my job, that was drafted at the first draft

Challenges in Drafting Ethiopian Legal Codes

00:12:48 - but they were unhappy with the, with that code, because having had the British there for a long time, influencing the courts, he, he was picking a very civil law, you know, type of procedure. So they decided to, to, to reject his draft and turn it over to a former judge from Elea, named Charles or Charles Matthew. And he finished the draft. But, so, so you had this mixture of,
00:13:20 - this caused a lot of problems in, in my case, because I was, well, for the codes that were drafted by continental experts, you wanted, if you were gonna hire a common lawyer, you needed one who had some knowledge and expertise of civil law. So one thing that, that, with this Ford Foundation money, Dean Paul hired
00:13:51 - who had some experience in comparative law. one of my colleagues, after he graduated law school in America, was financed to spend a year in Montpelier. And he got a degree in comparative law and, you know, new, new French and so forth. what he also did was reach out to recruit faculty from countries where he could find lawyers, civilian lawyers, who could teach in English,
00:14:21 - So some of them, we ended up with a real, very wide variety of nationalities teaching in the law school from America, France, Belgium, Canada, Scotland, Finland. and so that's a major thing that he did. in terms of teaching materials, the solution, which because of this Ford Foundation funding
00:14:53 - faculty member was given only one course to teach. So we had a very low student teacher, ratio, and we had expected to produce teaching materials, many of which ended up being published so that they would be there for the future. for example, I received funding, excuse me, to go to England, and I spent a year, excuse me, a semester at,
00:15:23 - in London to, to, research the sources of the criminal procedure code. And I ended up publishing a book in 1969, which is basically a, a, a book of teaching materials for the criminal procedure code, which is still being used today, 60 years later. I'm sorry to say, it's still being used. There should be new books, but we had all this research money

Challenges in Ethiopian Legal Education

00:15:54 - and they could afford to allow, let me teach one course for the first year. the Ethiopian faculty that is now in, in the law schools there, they don't have that kind of funding, and they haven't been able to get the support to do scholarship to create new books. I mean, there are some, but you know, it's been difficult. in terms of the law library, Jim Paul was able to get funding from the foundation
00:16:28 - and English law librarians to come and act as consultants. We ended up hiring an English law librarian, for a year or two. a big part of his job was fundraising beyond the Ford Foundation, but getting government assistance from Great Britain and other countries. and the, one thing I haven't mentioned the last one on, on this point I will, is
00:17:00 - and American, you know, civil, common law teachers, nobody on the faculty really, almost nobody knew anything about Ethiopian language, customs, you know, traditional law. and, that, that was a major problem with having expat law faculty. and this was dealt with, I think in large part by
00:17:33 - So I could hire two or three students to do research for me. I was doing research on traditional criminal procedure. Two of my students, started a radio program on traditional legal, traditional criminal procedure in Ethiopia, and encouraging people to call in with their experiences. They published columns in the newspaper. So, and our students all had to do empirical legal research
00:18:04 - So I'd have a student go interview judges, a about their bail practices or interview judges and observe when did counsel get appointed for indigents in the, in the high court. So their research and their assistance helped fill this gap of our ignorance, of our, the fact that we didn't have, most of us, except for the Peace Corps volunteers who, who knew they were going to Ethiopia and got language training
00:18:37 - But we only had a few of those. the, the, our students, picked up the gap on this. And I, I guess I also will mention, when we talked about the kinds of decisions that Dean Paul had to make is whether legal instruction would be full-time only, full-time, which is the American model. There, there, traditionally, traditionally, it is very hard

Legal Education in Ethiopia: A Historical Perspective

00:19:08 - and just go at night. usually you have to be a full-time student. That's the tradition. It's not universal. but we had an existing legal system out there under, you know, from before the codes. We had judges, we had lawyers, we had, people in the Ministry of Justice, and, they had never been trained in law. So the decision was made not only, you know, we had three levels of instruction.
00:19:39 - and we had day students who, that was their full-time program. And then we had night students, people working in the system. Many very high officials are holding important jobs as lawyers, you know, for foreign companies in Ethiopia. They could get the LLB at night. And then we had, a diploma program, which was taught in Amharic, and we had a certificate program, I guess the diploma program, partly in Amharic,
00:20:13 - And they were taught not only in Saba, but also in Osma, the capital of Eritrea, which was then a part of Ethiopia. So there was a real effort to bring legal education to the people functioning in the legal system who'd never had the benefit that certainly they might have had some training, but not in the new codes and the, and the new, you know, bill of rights in the Constitution,
00:20:43 - How did you staff that? How did you staff that with such a sort of a, not primitive, but such a small staff team to do the day work and the night work? What? Did you have loads of staff? well, I, you know, again, each of the full-time faculty had only one course to teach. So I was teaching my day students criminal procedure, and then a night I was teaching my night LLB students. Yeah. So, I, I had, because I'm a Pac Rat, I had saved a lot
00:21:16 - what's now 60 years. and well, one of the, the, the, documents that I had saved was a student newspaper, law student newspaper called The Balance And, and, and the Sword. and, was interesting to me looking back, it was actually on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the law school in 2013. I happened to be in Ethiopia, as a tourist,
00:21:46 - on the founding of the law school. And, and that's what what I wrote up became this, this piece on, a memoir, 50 years of legal education. So I had that with me, and I was able to, to look back at the, at what the students had been writing. so it was extremely interesting. One, one was by the only female student that, that we had in the law school.

Reflections on Women in Ethiopian Law Education

00:22:18 - from a Greek community in a ababa. and she wrote an article, a piece for the Balance and the sword saying, talking about the challenges of being the o as she said, the only girl in the law school, you know, and why is she there? it was a pleasure for me in 2013 when I gave this lecture to see that, about a third or more of this law students in the room were women.
00:22:47 - And I recently spoke to this, this only girl in the law school from, the 1960s. She now heads, a large law firm in Nairobi, Kenya with, a client list, including the World Bank and all these leading institutions. So, it, it, it, it, you know, it's, it's just great to see that. and she told me that with excluding her,
00:23:20 - and I asked her, she was the only girl still, and she said no. so a, a second item from the student publication was an account of our students. You know, they say that Ethiopians are naturally litigious. I mean, if you read old traveler accounts of, you know, Greece or, anthropologists who traveled through Ethiopia in the 17th century, the 18th century,
00:23:54 - advocates who, of course, lay advocates, you know, they very prominent lay role in, in the, in legal system. so our students were extremely litigious. They, they immediately, even though they hadn't graduated, they were active in bringing lawsuits to change things they didn't like. and so there was a program of university service
00:24:23 - by the government, to require all of the students to spend, whether it was their summer times or a year after school, I can't recall, but they had to go out in the countryside and, you know, do all kinds of work, which they were not happy doing. And our students brought a court case, arguing that the law university had no authority to require students to engage in national service.
00:24:55 - I'm not surprised being decided against the law students. but the fact that they brought it was, I think, extraordinary. And the third thing that, article in that newspaper student paper I read, was the students taking the initiative to try and, raise money to establish, dormitories and di dining facilities for law students, something called Law House.

Ethiopian Law Education: Challenges and Growth

00:25:25 - how many beds there would be, kitchen, dining room, and so, so forth place for students to study, because the students from, from who lived in ABA boat, they could commute easily, but students who lived out in the boondocks, it was very difficult for them to find a place to, to live and food to eat when they were studying law. And, you know, we, we felt that law study and they felt should be a full-time occupation. And, so the law house also never got funded.
00:25:58 - But these were signs of student activism, which were, I think, heartwarming. I, I had the feeling particularly, I mean, in 1974, highly sesi, there was a military coup. Highly SSI was assassinated after a period of time. And there was a communist military dictatorship called the dur under the leadership of, Colonel Mengistu Ha Merriam, who was supported
00:26:31 - they took power. And this was shortly after I had left Ethiopia, you know, five years or so. and I, I had the feeling, I think many of us had the feeling that everything we had done was gone to ruin. Because a lot of our students who were, you know, lawyers in the legal system, challenging the government, you know, who were articulating, you know, the right to habeas corpus and all that stuff, they were imprisoned.
00:27:04 - and were working as taxi cab drivers in Washington DC and probably in London. I don't know. So there was a real question about the lasting value of anything we had done. 'cause the di changed the laws and, you know, all the things that we had done, what good were they? But a couple of things happened. one is that the, eventually the dur
00:27:34 - a long, rebellion, from by the Northerners in Eritrea and Tigray. and secondly, the legal education really expanded in Ethiopia. when I was there, the population of Ethiopia was 35 million. I looked up this morning, the population is given as 120 million, so the population is quadrupled.
00:28:05 - Now there are 30 law schools. and I know you asked about the contributions of Ethiopian lawyers. I mean, I'll just say that the, the, the materials that we wrote and published in the 1960s are being speaking for myself, they're now being studied in the law schools every month. this past month in, in, Jan, February, I guess,

Legacy of Legal Education in Ethiopia

00:28:38 - that scholarly articles I wrote in criminal procedure 60 years ago, 55 years ago, are being taught. So the, the, the work that the expats did has had a new life. secondly, our former students have, of course, the law school was soon after the expats left. The law school faculty was all Ethiopian eyes.
00:29:07 - and many of them are engaged in scholarship. They don't have the financial support that we have, but there are publishing books. I have a former student who was imprisoned for seven years under the dur. And while in prison, he interviewed other prisoners and ended up writing in publishing a legal history of Ethiopia. and that's just one example, you know, so it's a pleasure. Now I'm in touch with people who, I've been back
00:29:39 - 2013. And the our graduates are now teaching and producing scholarship, and I think it's of a very high quality, of course, a lot, you know, a lot of them also have immigrated to other countries, but they're doing scholarship on Ethiopian law from America, from Europe, or whatever. So I, I feel that the work that we did, I now feel,
00:30:11 - legal scholarship in Ethiopia. And it really, as I say, it's, to me, it feels like a second life after this terrible, terrible, terrible torture and death in, in the 1970s and eighties. In, in contemporary times. There are certainly some, people who are very negative, or at least partially negative
00:30:43 - coming in, you know, without, with hardly any Ethiopian participation, and, setting up a law school and deciding what to teach. I mean, I've, I've had was interviewed by a, a doctoral student at Harvard getting his doctorate, in law, who was, suggesting that maybe we were a CIA plant, and that's what we were really doing there.
00:31:15 - And there have been, I, I think questioning of the value of our, of the adoption of all these foreign legal codes in Ethiopia, and then, which we didn't do, but then our participation in teaching them and, sort of spreading these foreign legal, doctrines. So, I mean, I, I, I've, I'm, I'm not,

Challenges and Triumphs of Legal Education in Ethiopia

00:31:46 - but, it, there certainly was a huge problem when we had all our teachers who didn't know the country, who didn't speak the language, and trying to, to, you know, patch things through to teach the codes. but all, all in all, I've come to feel extremely proud of the positive size, which is that I think we've trained a lot of people who, like the, this, the young woman,
00:32:23 - is a major role in, in, economic development in Kenya and further in East Africa at least. you know, I think, I think we, we worked hard and were very well supported, and that was, was a blessing. I wish the current law school, faculty could get a big grant from, from the states
00:32:59 - They get little ones instead. So, but I, I think it was a very, it had very large impact, and I think it, it, it had a very positive impact.

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50 Years of Legal Education in Ethiopia

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