Different strokes for different folks

As I wind my way through random bits of Tanzanian legislation, I occasionally come across something that is oceans apart from Canadian law and makes me stop and think. For instance, the Witchcraft Act, which makes the practice of the occult, enchantment and related acts an offence. A close runner up to the Witchcraft Act is the Corporal Punishment Act, which provides for the corporal punishment of individuals who have been found guilty of certain offences, such as rape and robbery. Any sentence of corporal punishment is in addition to a term of imprisonment. Pursuant to the provisions of the Act, a court can order that an individual receive no more than 24 strokes with an instrument of the court's choice. The corporal punishment cannot occur in installments, unless it is a specified type of offence, and must not be carried out in public. As you can see, the use of corporal punishment is fairly prescribed. Nonetheless, I wonder what our very liberal Supreme Court would make of it.

Other than the acts mentioned above, the Tanzanian legislation that I've read so far is quite similar in many respects to its Canadian counterparts. Of course, there are some subtle differences. For instance, the Tanzanian counterpart to the Divorce Act provides for polygamous marriages. My eyebrows shot up the first time I read the provision stating that a Muslim marriage was presumed to be polygamous, unless the parties explicitly stated otherwise. When I discussed the issue of polygamy with a co-worker later that day, his eyebrows shot up in turn when I told him polygamy was illegal in Canada (ignoring the whole Bountiful situation). The similarity in our reactions was highly amusing.

One of the other things that has struck me about the Tanzanian legal system is the lack of reported decisions. Tanzania, like Canada, is a common law jurisdiction, which means the law is partly based on court decisions. The last time decisions were reported in Tanzania was in 1997. It is my understanding that since then, Tanzanian lawyers have relied on each other to circulate decisions of the cases in which they are involved. Alternatively, if you need a decision that you don't have, you start calling your lawyer friends to see if anyone else has it. It makes for a close knit legal community. On the topic of being a lawyer, it was reported in the paper that 50 lawyers graduate from the judiciary college a year. Yes, that is only 50 new lawyers a year. Who said there were too many lawyers in the world?