Welcome to the African Union Law Research Network

This research initiative explores the emergence of African Union Law as a legal order and its implications for existing legal order in the region. The concept has multilevel transformative potentials. This development is significant because it will impact the region politically, socially and economically going forward.

The concept of ‘AU Law’ is defined as the bodies of treaties, resolutions and decisions that have direct and indirect application to the member States of the African Union. The focus of this project is the contention that the concept of AU Law could be a critical tool in the quest for solutions to peculiar problems in the African continent. There is the need to build and consolidate links between researchers and practitioners from relevant fields including law, history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, politics, business, religion, management and economics on this theme. This will create a veritable platform for knowledge exchange between academics, policy makers and NGOs.

The first phase of this project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2017-2019)
In the news: Could African Union law shape a new legal order for the continent?

OUT NOW! 

New edited collection with Oxford University Press: The Emergent African Union Law: Conceptualization, Delimitation, and Application  - Edited by Olufemi Amao, Michèle Olivier, and Konstantinos D. Magliveras

COMING SOON

Forthcoming: African Union Law Report (AULR)
An open access resource making available the judgments from the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights in a user- friendly way. Watch out for more information shortly!

Research monograph (2018):
African Union Law: The Emergence of a Sui Generis Legal Order
'This book explores the emergence of African Union law as a legal order and its implications for existing order in the region. As an authoritive text on the development of AU law, the book covers such pertinent issues as legislative powers, competences, direct effect in AU law, subsidiarity, interventionism, and enforcement of laws. Amao argues how there is a gradual movement from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism in the African Union legal order, and explores how this trajectory gradually and incrementally deemphasises the discourse on nation state sovereignty; a concept that has caused much problem in the African context. Drawing upon EU law as a comparison, the book also examines how the development of supranationalism affects crucial issues such as human rights, democratic reforms, territorial matters, tribal and religious disputes, and economic relations.'
Publisher: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group