ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the members of African groups work their land and organize their interdependent relationships. It suggests that the very informality of proceedings in traditional courts achieved similar forensic ends to those achieved for developed courts by counsel and counsel's preparations of pleadings. The chapter describes the "pseudo-problem" of corporate personality', which influenced judicial approaches to the question whether legal personality might be awarded to such typical customary institutions in Ghana as the 'stool' and the 'family'. The chapter also shows that the rights of the political community be called souverainete did not distinguish powers over land from other political powers. It argues that professional lawyers should be trained in customary law, a conclusion that was accepted as the ideal by the Conference on Local Courts and Customary Law held at Dar es Salaam in 1963.
