Expert Opinions on South Asian Laws: Their Relevance in Immigration Cases

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Abstract

In the 1990 issue of Immigration and Nationality Law and Practice Dr. Werner Menski, expert on South Asian laws at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, wrote an article outlining the need for immigration advisers to be informed about South Asian legal systems. In so doing he highlighted the relative lack of knowledge about these systems among practitioners and ways in which this could be overcome, by consulting existing writing and through education programmes. More than ten years on we might find that Menski’s observations about the lack of knowledge of South Asian laws would not be significantly different. In the same period we have seen the rapid expansion of immigration and asylum as areas of legal practice, a fact that makes the knowledge-gap even more yawning. One key method by which one can input information concerning South Asian laws, and other legal systems for that matter, into the legal process is through the submission of expert reports. My own experience of teaching and research in Comparative Immigration and Nationality Law and Ethnic Minorities and Law, has led me to become ever more aware of the need for study and dissemination of information about Asian and African legal systems in the European context. I have been called upon by practitioners to write reports particularly on South Asian laws, but also on nationality and immigration laws elsewhere. I use this opportunity therefore to set out some reflections on the writing and value of expert reports in the immigration law context.