Post written by one of the CGJ summer grant receivers.
Charles Horikami is interning with Lord Justice Chibita at the Supreme Court of Uganda.
The second week of my internship is when we got down to business. That first week was really just all fun and games, yeah introductions and touring around is work, but it’s not hard, it doesn’t require analytical reasoning or intense scrutiny. What does require that is case reading.
On Monday we went to the Supreme Court building where we will be doing most of our work and met with Lord Justice Chibita of the Supreme Court of Uganda. He is the Supreme Court Justice who we will be working under for the balance of the summer.
Background
Lord Justice Chibita is actually a law graduate from Iowa, while he was born and raised in Uganda, he decided after getting his law degree in Uganda to further his learning and continue to learn law in the US and take what he learned back to Uganda. For much of his career he has worked in various governmental roles until 2013 when he was made the Director of Public Prosecution. He served in that position fighting corruption until 2019 when he was appointed to the Supreme Court. It is an honor to work for and learn from such a great man.
Case Files
After a short introduction on Monday morning, we were handed a case file from his stacks of current cases and told to get to work putting together a brief containing the facts of the case, lower court decisions, issues to resolve, applicable laws, a summary of submissions and prayers for the parties involved, and a brief recommendation based on what we have researched.
As fate would have it the first case that I was handed was a property case and compared to my fellow interns a very simple one at that. To add a note here, Property Law is probably my favorite base type of law (thinking of Torts, Contracts, Property, Criminal, and Constitutional). Combined with my favorite activity in law, Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing, I was literally handed my dream job.
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As I said this first case I was handed was very straightforward, in fact it was kind of less than a case as it had already been ruled on by the Supreme Court, the parties to the suit were just applying for clarification on the extent of the rulings. While the case was very interesting–involving leased property by the government, tenancy in common, abandonment because of government policy, reclamation under new government policy, adverse possession, not filing the correct documentation within the statutory period (their version of title), expiration of lease leading to tenancy by suffrage, evictions, claims of fraud, and tenants claiming ownership–not much of that mattered for the issue that was being dealt with: what did the court intend to be the resolution.
That case took me a couple of days to finish putting together a brief, meeting with Lord Justice Chibita’s research assistant, making some edits, and turning it in to Lord Justice Chibita for review.
At that point I was ready for another case, and I told My Lord Justice Chibita how much I loved working on property cases and how much I loved doing the research and writing stuff. I told him that if he had any more of the same, I would love to do it. So, he gave me another property case, while the first case had maybe 3-400 pages of material, this new one has several thousand (see above picture).
A week later and I am still not done reading it. It involves so many other cases that have been involved in this one case that I can’t even begin to describe it. There are criminal cases, fraud cases, inheritance cases, restraining orders, action orders, contracts, banks, and all sorts of crazy stuff involved. It is fun. That may sound like a horror to somebody else, but this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Read cases, analyze and research the issues, and solve problems. I couldn’t ask for a better experience for a summer internship. It’s a shame that the entire internship is already 25% complete.
This post was written by a Center for Global Justice Student Staff member and Summer Grant Receiver. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of Regent University, Regent Law School, or the Center for Global Justice.