The Ethiopian civil code project: reading a ‘landmark’ legal transfer case differently (original) (raw)

The 1960 Ethiopian Civil Code is the largest legal transfer project into 20 th century Ethiopia. Considered as one of the 'landmark' cases of 'voluntary reception' of western law in a non-western country, it has been studied by students of legal transfer, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis responds to calls for the re-examination of the legal transfer project that sailed through radically different times-times that saw the emergence in Ethiopia of successive political regimes with their own ideologically-driven legal modernisation projects. It critiques and provides an alternative account to existing scholarship on the Ethiopian Civil Code project. It examines how contests over the nature of state and society relationships in Ethiopia (1890s-2010) have shaped the project. In order to do undertake this study, I develop an approach that spatially and temporally relativises Ethiopia's experience with the legal transfer project and, rejects the modernist assumptions, methodologies and questions, which informed existing scholarship on the Ethiopian Civil Code project. Drawing on the case of the codification and implementation of, and pedagogical approaches to, Book III and the inter-temporal and inter-spatial contests thereof, the thesis argues the Ethiopian Civil Code, a familiar 'poster' of legal transfer failure in a non-western nation, is not the failure it is usually depicted to be by existing scholarship. Indeed, my approach avoids the question of success or failure altogether. Adopted and incorporated by Christian Amhara landed elites engaged in their own local project of imperialism, the Ethiopian Civil Code was a product of Ethiopia's contested semicolonial legal modernity. Despite persisting through three different historical times and continuing to influence local practices, the Ethiopian Civil Code project is still subject to ongoing contestation and reinterpretation. As such, it is a repository of Ethiopia's competing and entangled modernisms and imperialisms. Declaration This thesis contains no material that has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my name in any university or other institution. To the best of my knowledge, it contains no material previously published or written by any other persons, except where due reference has been made in the text. The thesis is 77,333 words, exclusive of figures, tables, bibliography and appendices, as approved by the Research Higher Degrees Committee. iii Linguistic Notes Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of Amharic materials have been undertaken by the author of this thesis. As I finally sit back and reflect on my four-year journey through this project, I thank all those people and institutions who supported me and my project directly and indirectly. I am very thankful to the University of Melbourne without whose funding I would not have ventured to read, as I now claim, the Ethiopian Civil Code project differently. I owe special thanks to my supervisors, past and present: Pip Nicholson (Pip), Takele Bulto Seboka (Takele), and Jennifer Beard (Jenny). I owe a debt of gratitude to my principal supervisor, Professor Pip Nicholson who has been kind and supportive ever since my first email contact with her in 2012. Her immediate and positive response to my email asking for a little favour during my application to Melbourne Law School (MLS) was one of the important reasons why I found myself at MLS in 2013. I am forever grateful for that and countless others, Pip. I also want to thank Tekele and Jenny who co-supervised my project with Pip during different legs of my candidature. Thank you, Jenny, for coming on board replacing Takele and, of course, greatly elevating the project through your penetrating inquisitiveness. Working with you was one of the greatest experiences I had at MLS. Thank you to the MLS community who made overseas student life more bearable for me. Thank you to the Research Office people, particularly Rebecca Crosser and Domi Córdoba who have always been willing to go the extra mile to assist me in whatever way the can. Thank you to the Asian Law Center and to all 'Level 7' people who said 'hi' and bothered to ask me about my project over the past four years. I also want to thank the PhD candidates at the Asian Law Centre and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities with whom I discussed legal transfer, Ethiopia, Pierre Bourdieu and more. My thanks also go to the Ethiopian contingent at MLS (2013-2017), particularly Tsegaye Ararssa, who has shown the greatest interest in my work and encouraged me to look at my project from various vantage points. Thank you to my other Ethiopian friends in Melbourne, Abiy Tamene (and his family), Tilahun Hindeya, Samuel Baramo, Gashahun Fura, Tayechalem Moges, Kinfe Yilma for your support, encouragement, of course, company. My research benefited a great deal from my fieldwork in Ethiopia in 2015. I want to thank my interviewees whose written and oral responses to my open-ended questions proved valuable. Last but not least, I thank my family. Thank you, Mom, big sister Nunu (Simret G. Feyissa), and my wife Hawi (Haweni G. Gutema) for your love. As you are the most affected by my obsession with the Ethiopian Civil Code and the most supportive throughout this project, I have dedicated this work to you, Hawi. Thank you! v