ABSTRACT
As indicated earlier, in all countries of the region except Tonga, there is express provision in the written law for the application of customs or customary law by the courts or tribunals authorised to determine rights to customary land.10 The decisions made by the courts or tribunals at first instance are not published, but, in Nauru, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, reports of the decisions of the High Court or Supreme Court on appeal have been published. A survey of these cases reveals only a minority of instances where there was real controversy about what was the applicable custom or rule of customary law. Thus, in Nauru, in Demaure v Adumo,11 the Nauru Lands Committee, which is the statutory successor to the chiefs of Nauru, held that a child who was adopted by a man from outside his family did not have the same rights to succeed to land, in custom, as natural children. In the Supreme Court, however, the Chief Justice disagreed with the Committee’s assessment of custom, and held that any adopted child, whether from within the family or outside, had the same rights of succession as a natural child. Again, in Solomon Islands, the case of Maerua v Kahanatarau12 disclosed that land in Makira Island had been awarded in 1975 on the basis of patrilineal succession, but in 1982 this was held to be incorrect, and the rules of matrilineal succession were applied.
