ABSTRACT
Descriptions of the laws, the courts and the police have been brought together in one chapter because, owing to the common influence of British institutions in the now independent states of what was British West Africa, and because of the similar American traditions inherited by Liberia, most aspects of the legal system are alike in all five countries. It is generally agreed that one of the necessary conditions for guaranteeing to the individual citizen that he will be able to enjoy his legal and constitutional rights, free from the unpredictable, arbitrary interference of the government, is that the judges themselves shall be free from political influence or control; in other words, that the judiciary should be completely separated from the Executive. In British colonies, on the other hand, judges were regarded as being a special type of civil servant, and so, like all other civil servants, held office ‘during the Queen’s [in other words, the Governor’s] pleasure’.
