A Systematic Quantitative Review of Literature on Social Justice and Clinical Legal Education in Africa

Abstract

The global spread of clinical legal education programs is punctuated by nuances in clinical practices. These result from the diverse priorities placed on clinic missions, the different legal frameworks and foci of educational curricula as well as variances in political and socio-economic realities among countries and regions. Some aspects of these features are reflected in the few existing systematic reviews of clinical scholarship which focus on clinic sustainability or the European continent. This article is a quantitative systematic review of 61 articles published before 2020 in English language legal journals. It contributes a coherent picture of the development and flow of research on the social justice role of clinical legal education in Africa generally and more specifically, in Kenya and South Africa. The results demonstrate that a small group of authors concentrated in particular countries are driving the publication of studies on particular topics in the continent, with diverse methodological approaches, in journals focused on legal education. They co-authored some publications and were highly prolific in their single-authored works. The results provide researchers exploring this topic with an evidence base to advance global scholarship and inform policy and practice on the social justice and pedagogical roles of clinical legal education.