DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LAW

DR CHRIS U ANYANWU- AG. HEAD OF DEPARTMENT

WELCOME TO OUR DEPARTMENT

We are very pleased to welcome you to the Department of Public and Private Law and to give you an insight into the range of academic activities in the Department including a brief profile and research interests of our academic staff. These are presented in the following order:

•   Brief Introduction of the Department by the Ag. H.O.D
•   Profile of our Lecturers, their research interests, areas of specialization and publications, together with non academic staff.
•  Our Departmental Journal – The Journal Of Public Law including a footage of some of the articles published therein.
• Some popular publications by members of the Department notably The Jurisprudence of Sovereignty and Constitutional Essays by Dr Chris Anyanwu etc

1. BRIEF INTRODUCTION OF THE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Public and Private Law is one of the three major Departments of the Faculty of Law of the University of Nigeria. The first Faculty of Law in our country came into being when in 1961, the buildings and infrastructures of the former Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology located in Enugu was co-opted into the University of Nigeria as its Enugu Campus. The University itself formally opened as the first full-fledged University in Nigeria soon after our independence on the 7^th of October 1960. The Enugu Campus houses the Faculties of Business Administration, Environmental Studies, Law and Medicine. The Department of Public and Private Law took off as one of the three major Departments in the Faculty in 1961. When it took off, like the Faculty, it was also the first of its kind in Nigeria.

Unlike many disciplines, the study of law is so interwoven that it may not be possible to distinguish or delineate the range of studies or activities of any Department from others in any sense of exclusivity. Consistent with the nature of law itself (which aims at fashioning out rules for effective regulation of human behaviors/interactions) what we have for purposes of legal studies is an integrated Faculty, departmentalized for administrative convenience especially for undergraduate studies. For postgraduate legal studies in this University, candidates normally apply to the Faculty of Law, through one of the Departments although choice of supervisors/examiners often cuts across departments. This department registers an average of fifteen to twenty students for the LL.M (Master of Laws) Programme yearly under various areas of specialization and also between five to Ten Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) students every academic year. A little insight into the lawyers’ attitude to nomenclatures and/or compartmentalization of laws as ‘Public’ or ‘Private’ may not be out of place here.