‘Africa Needs Many Lawyers Trained for the Need of their Peoples’ Struggles over Legal Education in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana

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.

political conservatives either. We will see that nationalist radicals too privileged orthodox English modes of teaching over American innovation.
The paper is organised as follows. In the next section, we set the general background, considering key British policy documents on higher education in the African colonies, produced towards the end of the Second World War. A new policy consensus from that time underpinned the establishment of the University College of the Gold Coast (later University of Ghana) in 1948 among others. These colleges aimed at the creation of an indigenous elite, relatively small in number, ready to take over leadership at eventual independence. To this end, they proposed a model whereby the international standing of new colonial universities was underwritten by formal links with the University of London and the presence of expatriate staff. We then trace the manner in which these objectives were realized by the University College of the Gold Coast (later 'Ghana') as a whole and in particular by its Law Department, founded in 1958. It will be seen that an initial period of stability was followed by increasing conflict over funding and autonomy, as Ghana's economic situation deteriorated and the government sought to assert greater political control in the face of regional and classbased opposition to President Nkrumah. Conflict with the judiciary and the use of preventive detention were accompanied by government attempts to influence appointments and teaching at the University, leading ultimately to the deportation of the American Dean. We then review the creation of the Ghana Law School, as a rival to the University Law Department, which was pursued during this time of academic and political contention. As we will discuss at length, three main conceptions of legal education were proposed in these debates: an instrumentalist model, associated with the government, which sought ways to bypass the university and to train the large number of lawyers needed for development; a humanistic American model which emphasized interactive teaching methods over lecturing, and which would give the university a monopoly of training; and a traditionalist model which sought continuity with British forms of legal professionalism and teaching practice. We note the resonance of each model with specific local and international political tendencies. We consider particularly the important and growing role played by Ghanaian political and educational actors in these struggles. We attend to student perceptions and the nature of their own interventions in the academic politics of the period.

II From 'Adaptation' to the 'Gold Standard': Education and the End of Empire
British policy on education in its African colonies went through two significant phases in the period from the end of the First World War. The first was aimed at supporting the general policy of exercising control through local chiefs exercising customary powers or 'indirect rule'. 14 A White Paper of 1924, based on the work of the Advisory Committee on Native Education in Tropical Africa, 15 was shaped by a fear that widely available secondary and higher education would lead to the creation of an intellectual proletariat or 'babu class', as in 19 th century India, capable of challenging the authority of traditional rulers on which British domination rested. 16 Emphasis was placed instead on collaboration with missionary educators and the provision of primary schooling in vernacular languages, rather than English. In the manner of programmes for rural black communities in the southern United States, syllabuses would be 'adapted' to the needs of local students and have a strongly vocational focus. 17 This was supported by colonial anthropology which articulated concerns about 'detribalization' resulting from uncontrolled contact with western modernity. Nationalist thinkers in the Gold Coast, such as JE Casely Hayford, and elsewhere, bitterly criticised this policy, for effectively confining Africans to subordinate roles in administration and the economy. They 14 See C Whitehead 'Education Policy in British Tropical Africa: The 1925 White Paper in Retrospect' (1981) 10 History of Education 195-203. 15 Later renamed the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies. 16 Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa Cmd. 2374 (London: Colonial Office 1924). 17 The policy took the name of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, a charity which supported adapted education in the US and was invited to investigate education provision in British Africa by the Colonial Office in 1922; see further U Bude, 'The Adaptation Concept in British Colonial Education ' (1983) 19 Comparative Education 341-355.
argued for a literary-oriented education, beyond primary level, that would allow upward mobility and circumvent the power of chiefs. 18 The second phase followed the Second World War and was provoked by growing criticism of indirect rule. The system of traditional authority was undermined by increasing population movement to towns and cities. The extractive economy, which indirect rule and adaptive education served, had been badly affected by the Depression of the 1930s. 19 The widespread stagnation and rural poverty which ensued opened Britain to embarrassing criticism in international fora and by its wartime ally, the United States. 20 With the passage of Colonial Development and Welfare Acts in 1940 and 1945 'modernization' took prominence in imperial policy making. It was matched by an acceptance that African self-government could not be resisted in the long run.
Governors and officials were now urged, not to suppress, but to cultivate dependable local nationalism and its often Western-educated leaders. 21 Caution in education policy was replaced by a significant expansion of primary and secondary schooling. 22 The official position on higher education also changed dramatically. According to one influential report, rather than the creation of new universities being politically dangerous, it was their absence which threatened the colonial status quo. 23  The majority proposed separate university colleges in each of Britain's territories in the region, the minority a single institution at Ibadan, with extra-mural centres in the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and elsewhere in Nigeria. Nationalist outcry in the Gold Coast forced the Labour government to follow the majority and, as a result, three independent colleges was approved, including one centred on the government high school at Achimota near Accra, which opened in 1948. 25 More than half of the initial cost of the new college was met by a grant from the Cocoa Marketing Board, which had itself been made possible by nationalist education campaigns to convince cocoa farmers of its importance. 26 But how was it to be run?
This essential question was addressed by the Asquith Commission, whose report on the tasks and orientation of new universities across the wider British Empire was so influential that it lent its name to a particular philosophy of higher education. 27 The 'Asquith doctrine' profoundly marked the first decade of the University College of the Gold Coast and set the parameters for the debates on legal education which are the focus of this paper. It needs to be understood against the backdrop of British imperial strategy after 1945. Accepting that self-government was increasingly likely, governments in London sought to maintain control over the process and to ensure an enduring influence over former colonies. 28  imperial family of universities which would prepare elites capable of ruling independent states, linked by ties of learning and practice to Britain. 29 At its heart was a concern that the quality of teaching would be in no way inferior to that of British universities.
African institutions should be pegged to an academic 'Gold Standard' which would allow their graduates 'to enter the world community of intellect' on equal terms. 30 This aim was realized through the creation of a 'special relationship' between the new colleges and the University of London. 31 The latter approved syllabuses, scrutinized examination processes and participated in staff appointments. In the early years most academics were ex patriates, recruited in the United Kingdom through the Inter- and eminence grise, Geoffrey Bing was still harsher, pointing out the inconsistency between the University's modernizing mission and its imported rituals.
The incantations of an African priest or the pouring of libation was dismissed as irreverent barbarism but the recitation of a grace in Latin and the circulation of the port in the proper direction at High Table...was essential for the proper education of the scholar....It would have been thought unfair...to have deprived the Principal of his juju when clearly he was so genuinely convinced that his magic would improve the educational prospects of his undergraduates. 38 We will return to discuss Bing's key role in the reform of legal education in subsequent sections. For now it should be noted, however, that the form and ethos of the Asquith Universities were popular, in their early years at least, not only with ambitious students and local staff, but also at least initially with nationalist leaders, who had chafed at the limitations of missionary and adapted education. 39 Even the radical Convention Peoples Party of Kwame Nkrumah could declare in its 1954 manifesto an 'ambition to make the university among the finest places of learning on earth'. 40 This attitude was to change as issues of higher education standards, financing, staffing and autonomy became a key focus for contestation between political factions in the Gold Coast.
Ultimately Nkrumah's wish that the university should be 'an academic centre of national life'. 41 As the then sole university in the country, it symbolized the independent nation as such. 42 But it also had to serve the practical needs of the people, a concern that came to predominate in his thinking and in the stance of his government. The tensions between these ambitions were particularly evident in relation to legal education both at the University and beyond. Before examining them in detail it is worth reflecting on the evolving role of the legal profession in the politics of pre-and post-independence Ghana, which provides significant background for the academic struggles of the early 1960s.

IV 'Lawyer-Merchants' and 'Verandah Boys': Politics and the Legal Profession
The British authorities in the Gold Coast first permitted and recognized the practice of law in the 1853. 43 The opportunity which this presented was taken up by the sons of prosperous classes in the Colony region along the coast. Lacking facilities for training lawyers locally, young men were sent to London to attend the Inns of Court. This formation, as well as their class background, created a cultural and professional bond with England and a notable political and social conservatism. 44 These ties were sustained by their very mode of practising law, which was focussed above all on litigation and also by the exclusive focus at the Inns on English law. 45 65 The case is discussed in OY Asamoah, The Political History of Ghana (1950Ghana ( -2013 Nkrumah was also accused of pro-Soviet sympathies by critics throughout his career.
Historians suggest that this claim was in fact the product of a misapprehension on the part of the British authorities and, later, the tactical desire of the Ghanaian opposition to align its cause with that of anti-communist lawmakers on Capitol Hill. 76  Notwithstanding these foreign policy turns, independent Ghana was consistent in its leading role in the movement of non-aligned states. 78 Nkrumah challenged French policy in Algeria and welcome freedom fighters from across the continent to Accra. 79 The most tangible manifestation of this commitment was the contribution of around 2,000 troops to the UN mission in the Congo and a diplomatic push in support of beleaguered President Patrice Lumumba. 80  Nkrumah and Bing on the other deteriorated due to conflicts over academic freedom in the university generally and in its law faculty in particular as we will see in the following sections.

VI 'A Troubled University in a Troubled Land': Conflict at Legon
The academic freedom found an echo with political and educational commentators internationally, adding to Nkrumah's growing reputation as autocrat. 93 These conflicts also played out in and around the University Law Department, founded in 1958, with dedicated funding from the government, and admitting its first students (a total of 30) in 1959. 94

VII 'The Need for a Degree': A Dispute over Legal Education
It is most likely that all of the charges against Harvey were confected by party activists.
But there were substantive issues in dispute too. 108  Nkrumah and Bing's interventions on legal education were also marked by a steady Legal education in the new Ghana would be reshaped to serve this end. Not litigators but 'legally trained administrators and legal technicians' were required for development through socialist planning. 127 The re-orientation of practice toward external goals meant that the curriculum should include non-law subjects such as economic, social and political science, and even science and technology, in addition to standard law courses. This vision of the new lawyer as technocrat was complemented by a more populist concern with the needs of 'the ordinary man and woman' in small towns and villages whose 'everyday legal problems' had been neglected by elite litigators. 128 An expanded cadre of formally admitted practitioners and paralegals was required to provide them with 'inexpensive and good advice' and to defend them against 'wealthy trading and commercial firms'. 129 Through the GLS, civil servants, police and army personnel, for example, would be able to gain the legal knowledge necessary for the more effective discharge of their public duties. Equally its lower cost would attract into the profession 'those whose families lacked the money to send them to London to read law'. 130 So-called 'legal letter writers', operating as informal advisors in the countryside would be offered instruction 'in the rudiments of law' as a condition for being formally licensed. Significantly these initiatives were resisted in the name of maintaining standards. The GLS curriculum, as we have seen was pegged to the Bar course in London, and its quest for the authority to train lawyers from scratch was thwarted. The 'letter writers' proposal was also rejected by the General Legal Council, as a 'colonialist suggestion' that Ghanaians could not aspire to the same quality of legal education as that prevailing in England. Bing, in response, castigated this defence of absolute standards, as illustrating 'in miniature the internal struggle between the elite and the mass of the people'. 131

IX 'A Learned Profession': Harvey's Humanism
In taking steps to ensure a widening of legal education suited to Ghanaian conditions, Bing and Nkrumah were opposed by the WB Harvey. Admittedly he acknowledged like them that the law department faced the challenge of promoting Ghanaian staff and he shared their concern that the University Law Faculty should not isolate itself from the wider society. 132 In form and substance, however, his vision differed from theirs quite sharply. Harvey arrived at Legon 'carrying the torch for American legal enlightenment', Harvey robustly defended the inherent academic value of the academic law degree.
In its core subjects, as much as through non-law electives, it offered a 'rich storehouse of data of general humanistic and social significance'. 139 Law was a worthy subject of study even by those who would not go on to practice. The law of contract provided an insight into the workings of the market economy, tort law into the costs of industrialization, and so on. This potential was sold short by the abbreviated training offered at institutions like the GLS which he dismissed as '"crash programs" for the training of minimally qualified legal technicians'. 140 If national resources were scarce they should be devoted to providing standard law degrees to a high standard, rather than to supplementary and inevitably mediocre law teaching aimed at public servants and the like. The practical corollary of this view for Harvey, as we have seen, was that legal education should be solely delivered by the University as in the United States.
This humanistic, as opposed to purely instrumentalist conception of legal education was also evident in how Harvey, and his colleague Robert Seidman represented their teaching practice. Trained at Michigan and Yale law schools respectively, both followed the Socratic, or dialogic method of teaching. Famously, this inducted students into the practice of common law reasoning by a rigorous and open-ended questioning on the detail of important cases, through which they were expected to grasp the principles of a given legal area. The function of the law teacher in this mode was 'to organize an apt body of working materials, to stimulate the student to consider them in such a way as to sharpen his [sic] own analytical skills and insights, and by his questions and criticisms to light the student's path toward discovery, but not to carry him along it'. 141 As regards teaching materials, this approach privileges casebooks, containing extracts from primary legal sources, rather than straight-forwardly descriptive textbooks, and American staff at Legon were active producing such casebooks for their  144 Small wonder that the President, himself seen as an incipient autocrat, 'objected to the way Americans taught "Western law"', or that proponents of the traditional lecturing style in the University had also sought to introduce compulsory courses for students in the party doctrine of 'Nkrumahism'. 145 The popularity and inherent democratic potential in the Socratic method was borne out for Seidman in the very week of his expulsion in January 1964. He recalled with pride a criminal law class from that period which saw students tease out the implications of the common law doctrine of provocation with reference to a Ghanaian defendant poised between 'rational understanding' and 'traditional beliefs'. His own departure from Accra airport was attended by most staff from the Law Faculty and a large body of obviously distressed, but supportive students. Even in his absence, he was sure that their acquired skill in Socratic techniques would allow them to run their own classes for a number of weeks. 146 Harvey too expected that students who had been 'encouraged to question, to criticize and to attempt to defend their own analyses [would] never again be content with passive note-taking on lectures'. 147

X 'Indebted to England': Conservatives and Nationalists
Legal conservatism, in teaching and practice, was attacked in the name of Ghanaian

XI Conclusion
Legal education, neglected and discouraged under colonial rule, received much attention after independence but there were often conflicting outlooks on how it should be provided and its aims. In this paper we have shown that from 1957, humanistic. 174 There, many expatriate teachers learned from their students, who evoked the downfall of Nkrumah as one justification for an increasingly radical challenge to the inherited disciplinary system and its conservative political effects. 175 Interdiscplinarity and a common foundational curriculum was proposed as means of exposing the enduring domination of new African states in sectors such as law and the economy. 176 It important to note, however, that this fourth model had not yet emerged in Ghana in the earlier period under discussion here.
As regards the shape of legal education in Ghana it must be admitted that in the medium-and long-term both Harvey and Bing failed in their ambitions. The bid to create a university monopoly of legal training was thwarted by Harvey's deportation in 1964. The bid to by-pass the university by allowing non-graduates to practice after studying at the Ghana Law School was frustrated by Bing's own expulsion after the coup against Nkrumah in 1966. Our discussion shows that neither proposal was supported by a sufficiently numerous and influential domestic constituency. 177 Ultimately the mixed English model, as supported by the International Advisory Committee was retained. In the aftermath of the 1966 coup the university council declared its intention to return Ghana 'to the academic gold standard', and this development was a noted ambition of the conspirators themselves. 178 In that period too, the University Law Faculty developed a significant partnership with its equivalent at the University of Oxford. 179