Cameroon has a mixed system of civil law, common law, and customary law. The legal system is influenced by Cameroon's English colonial legal heritage. Cameroon achieved independence on 1 January 1960. Sources of law include the Constitution, legislation, judicial precedents, and customary law.
Because databases/websites for finding legal materials from Cameroon are limited, you will likely need to rely on secondary sources to assist with identifying relevant citations to laws or cases. These secondary sources summarize and explain the law.
These research guides are useful starting points for understanding Cameroon's legal system as well as the sources of law in Cameroon. These guides include links to recommended online resources that provide access to legal materials from this country.
Cameroon's current constitution was adopted in 1972 (subsequently amended) and is the country's third constitution. This constitution replaced the federation with a unitary state.
The UN Women Global Gender Equality Constitutional Database provides access to gender equality related provisions in constitutions from around the world.
Resources available for finding legal materials from Cameroon consist of free websites and subject law collections hosted by NGOs or other entities. Westlaw and Lexis do not provide access to laws and cases from Cameroon. Legal materials may only be available in French.
If you conduct a Google search to retrieve any legal materials cited in secondary sources, make sure to critically evaluate whether the website is a authoritative or credible resource.
Subject-specific collections of laws, which collect laws from various countries pertaining to a particular subject, are useful resources to incorporate into your research process. These resources often have better search capabilities than foreign government websites and can generally be navigated in English, even though the full-text laws will mostly be in the official language for the country.
For additional suggestions for subject law collections beyond the selected databases listed below, see the GlobaLex Foreign Law - Subject Law Collections on the Web research guide.