S.J.D. Candidate
pbatariwah@sjd.law.harvard.edu
Dissertation
“Food, Peace and Freedom”: How the Emergence of a Colonial Mining Industry Reconfigured Customary Land, Labor and Mineral Rights in Ghana 1874-2006
My dissertation conducts a historical inquiry into mining law in Ghana to understand why and how colonial and post-colonial relationships among Ghana, Britain and the dominant actors of the international economic order have entrenched a legal framework which gives significant power to the state to determine who gets, among other things, mineral rights. This dissertation specifically studies how the introduction of a Western dominated legal order to regulate mining collided with existing customary notions of resource sovereignty, and land and mineral rights. It argues that the collision course led to an intense contestation of interests and values among inhabitants, the British, local elites, and foreign mining capital, eventually creating an industry which marginalized mining communities. This is a process which continues today.
My project will place a central emphasis on legal pluralism as an entry point into this historical inquiry. It studies legal pluralism both as a way describing the collision between legal orders and a tool for mobilizing resistance in the face of dominant foreign interests and/or the vested interests of local elites.
Fields of Research and Supervisors
- Political Economies of Extraction in Sub-Saharan Africa with Professor Lucie E. White, Harvard Law School, Principal Faculty Supervisor
- Legal Pluralism, History and Current Status and Political Economy of Economic Dominance in Colonial and Post-Colonial Relations with Professor Duncan M. Kennedy, Harvard Law School
- Labor in Colonial West Africa with Professor Idriss Fofana, Harvard Law School
Additional Research Interests
- Family Law
- Human Rights and Business Law
- Law and Development
Education
- Harvard Law School, S.J.D. Candidate 2025-Present
- Harvard Law School, LL.M. Program 2024-2025 (requirements fulfilled, degree waived)
- Ghana School of Law, Q.C.L 2022
- University of Ghana, LL.B. 2020
Representative Publications
- “Unpacking ‘Pluralism’ in African Literature”, 3 Harvard French Review 50-52 (2025)
- “Towards The Establishment of a Mineral Resource Fund in Ghana: A Critical Review of the Minerals Income Investment Fund in Ghana”, 11:3 KAS African Law Study Library (2024) (co-author).
- “Addressing Human Rights Violations Under International Norms: Ghana’s Experience with Multinational Corporations in The Mining Sector”, 32:3 African Journal of International and Comparative Law 327 (2024) (co-author).
- “An Assessment of the Doctrine of Commorientes and Its Implications for the Devolution of Testate and Intestate Property in Ghana”, 68:2 Journal of African Law 263 (2024) (co-author).
- “Procedural Fairness in Ghanaian Labour Law: A Review of Akpass v Ghana Commercial Bank”, 32 University of Ghana Law Journal 178 (2023).
- “Accessing Credit for Socio-Economic Development: A Comparison of the Borrowers and Lenders Act 2008 (Act 773) and the Borrowers and Lenders Act 2020 (Act 1052)”, in Twenty Years in the Evolution of Ghanaian Law and Legal System 2003-2023, Reflections from the Ghana School of Law Class of 2003 423-465 (Kweku Ainuson, David Asiedu & Richard Frimpong-Oppong eds, 2023) (co-author)
- Family Law in Africa: Comparative Perspectives on Systems of Marriage in Selected African Countries (2023) (co-editor).
Additional Information
- Professional affiliation: Ghana Bar Association
- Languages: English (fluent), Dagaare (native)
Last Updated: June 25, 2025