Federalism and the Courts in Africa

Yonatan T. Fessha (LL.B, LL.M, Ph.D.), currently a Marie Curie Fellow at Eurac Research Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), is Professor of Law at the University of the Western Cape. His research interests include constitutional law and human rights. His teaching and research focuses on examining the relevance of constitutional design in dealing with the challenges of divided societies. He has published widely on matters pertaining to but not limited to federalism, constitutional design, autonomy and politicized ethnicity. Karl Kössler is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Comparative Federalism at Eurac Research Bolzano/Bozen (Italy). He received his Ph.D. in comparative public law and political science from the University of Innsbruck (Austria). His main fields of interest and expertise are comparative federalism and local government studies, as well as constitutional design in divided societies.

Introduction (Karl Kössler and Yonatan T. Fessha); 1. Judicial Federalism in Comparative Perspective (Erin F. Delaney); 2. Federalism and the Courts in Nigeria (Patrick Ukata); 3. Giving ‘Shape and Texture’ to the Federal System? Ethiopia’s Courts and its Unusual Umpire (Yonatan T. Fessha and Zemelak Ayele); 4. The Courts and the Provinces in South Africa (Victoria Bronstein); 5. The Courts and Local Governments in South Africa (Oliver Fuo); 6. The Courts and Devolution: The Kenyan Experience (Conrad M. Bosire); Comparative Observations (Yonatan T.Fessha and Karl Kössler)