LAW DICTIONARY EDITOR ORGANISES QUIZ COMPETITION FOR YOUNG LAWYERS

by the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court since 1955.

“The book is unique because: a. It combines the Appellate courts’ reliance on definitions from Black’s Law Dictionary, Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary, Words and Phrases Legally Defined, 2nd Edition, The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, The Webster’s Dictionary, Chambers 21st Century Dictionary etc;

“b. It makes reference to the cases where the words and phrases were defined;

“c.. It is indigenous, and addresses the peculiar circumstances of the Nigerian legal firmament;

“d. It is the only Nigerian book, that has over 2000 defined words and phrases;

“Further information on the book, can be assessed at www.bldictionary.com”.

He added, “The idea of editing a Law Dictionary, first flashed through my mind sometime in 2010 when I needed to ascertain the judicial meaning of “discountenance” – a regular practice-word which was neither in the Black’s Law Dictionary, nor other materials at my disposal at that time.

“When the omission was later confirmed in the decision in Ezeugo v The State (2013) 9 NWLR (Pt. 1360) 508, I thought to myself – a vacuum for the publication of the Nigerian Law Dictionary stricto sensu, has been created.

“The challenge of harmonising the manuscript which I had gathered since 2013, however, remained floating in my mind until early 2017, when I was literarily confronted by a series of judicial dictionaries for many jurisdictions: from Bryne’s Law Dictionary to Jowitt’s Dictionary of English Law, to the Austrian Legal Dictionary, and then, the South African Legal Dictionary by Williams Henry Sommerset Bell etc. Alas! The Nigerian version was conspicuously missing”, he said.