Constitution Plagiarism: The Gambian Reality

Abstract

The Note addresses the assignment mandated The Gambia Constitution Drafting Committee to prepare a Constitution to replace that of 1997 in response to popular demand. The team of experts assembled by government accomplished the task though with a serious flaw: plagiarism. The legislature however, for other reasons, vetoed the document. With diverse viewpoints on plagiarism and legal maxims, through qualitative analysis, this Note examines where the fault lay by probing what the assignment entails. The action of the drafting Committee left the society confused and without recourse after spending a whooping sum of money on what turned out to be a white elephant project that preserved rather than eliminate well preserved colonial constitutional anachronisms. As no legal remedy exist for both plagiarism and breach of trust, the Note concluded that the fault is not in their stars but in the society that needs to accelerate the pace of educational development to avert a repeat of the incidence.