In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the setting up of university law schools in many African nations led to often bitter battles over the purpose of legal education. The stakes in these struggles were high. Deliberately neglected under colonial rule, legal education was an important focus for the leaders of new states, including Kwame Nkrumah, first President of Ghana. It was also a significant focus for expatriate British scholars and American foundations, seeking to shape the development of new universities in Africa. Disputes centred on whether training would have a wholly academic basis, and be taught exclusively in the University of Ghana, or be provided in addition through a dedicated law school with a more practical ethos. This debate became entangled in a wider confrontation over academic freedom between Nkrumah’s increasing authoritarian government and the university, with its significant body of expatriate lecturers, and indeed in wider political and class struggles in Ghana as a whole. Tensions came to a head in the period between 1962 and 1964 when the American Dean of Law was deported along with other staff on the foot of allegations of their seditious intent. In this paper we document these complex struggles, identifying the broader political stakes within them, picking out the main, rival philosophies of legal education which animated them, and relating all of these to the broader historical conjuncture of decolonisation. Drawing on a review of archival materials from the time, published histories and memoirs, as well as interviews, we aim to show that debates over legal education had a significance going beyond the confines of the Law Faculty. They engaged questions of African nationalism, development and social progress, the ambivalent legacy of British rule and the growing influence of the United States in these territories.

中文翻译：

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“非洲需要许多受过培训以满足其人民需求的律师”

在 1950 年代末和 1960 年代初，许多非洲国家建立大学法学院经常导致围绕法律教育目的的激烈斗争。这些斗争的赌注很高。在殖民统治下被故意忽视，法律教育是新国家领导人的重要关注点，包括加纳第一任总统夸梅·恩克鲁玛。这也是外籍英国学者和美国基金会的一个重要关注点，他们寻求塑造非洲新大学的发展。争议集中在培训是否具有完全的学术基础，并仅在加纳大学教授，还是通过具有更实用精神的专门法学院提供。这场辩论卷入了恩克鲁玛日益壮大的专制政府与拥有大量外籍讲师的大学之间关于学术自由的更广泛对抗，以及整个加纳更广泛的政治和阶级斗争。1962 年至 1964 年期间，美国法学院院长和其他工作人员因涉嫌煽动叛乱而被驱逐出境，紧张局势达到了顶峰。在本文中，我们记录了这些复杂的斗争，确定了其中更广泛的政治利害关系，挑选了激发这些斗争的主要的、对立的法律教育哲学，并将所有这些与更广泛的非殖民化历史结合点联系起来。回顾当时的档案资料、出版的历史和回忆录，以及采访，我们的目标是表明，关于法学教育的辩论具有超越法学院范围的意义。他们涉及非洲民族主义、发展和社会进步、英国统治的矛盾遗产以及美国在这些领土上日益增长的影响等问题。