Diplomacy & Public Service
Peerless
Taslim Olawale Elias
1914 – 1991
The first African to preside over the International Court of Justice
Peerless is level 1 of 4 in the Nigeria Hall of Fame: changed the field itself. Tell the country's story without them and the story breaks. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Attorney-General at independence, Chief Justice of Nigeria, and then President of the International Court of Justice — no African jurist has gone further.
Taslim Olawale Elias took his doctorate at University College London and taught there and at Oxford before returning to Nigeria as attorney-general and minister of justice in 1960, the year of independence.
He held that office for twelve years and did much of the drafting that turned a colonial legal order into a national one. His scholarship — The Nature of African Customary Law and a long series of works on African law and on the law of international organisations — did something few had attempted: it argued in the language of European jurisprudence that African customary law was law, systematic and principled, and not a collection of local habits.
He became Chief Justice of Nigeria in 1972 and was removed after the 1975 coup. He was elected to the International Court of Justice at The Hague in 1976 and served as its President from 1982 to 1985, the first African to hold the post, remaining a judge there until his death in 1991.
He held that office for twelve years and did much of the drafting that turned a colonial legal order into a national one. His scholarship — The Nature of African Customary Law and a long series of works on African law and on the law of international organisations — did something few had attempted: it argued in the language of European jurisprudence that African customary law was law, systematic and principled, and not a collection of local habits.
He became Chief Justice of Nigeria in 1972 and was removed after the 1975 coup. He was elected to the International Court of Justice at The Hague in 1976 and served as its President from 1982 to 1985, the first African to hold the post, remaining a judge there until his death in 1991.
- International Court of Justice — Judge Taslim Olawale Elias
- UCL Laws — Taslim Olawale Elias (1914-91): legal scholar and judge
- Wikipedia — Taslim Olawale Elias
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