We would like to thank theSt. Louis University – Brussels for providing us with the digitized journals.

The colonization of the Congo has led to an abundance of legal questions. These reflections find first place in general periodicals, which include important legal sections, before appeared in 1908 the first specialized journals.

Three of these specialized journals have been digitized and are accessible on Digithemis:

The Journal des Tribunaux d’Outre-mer, published in Brussels, represents the metropolitan center for the distribution of the journal's issues. The first two journals represent, as for them, the colonial center of Elisabethville. Elisabethville was founded in 1910 in a very rich mining environment, dominated by the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. Since the creation of the city, an appeal tribunal – the second erected in the Belgian colony – was set up there to cover Katanga, thus bringing a generation of young magistrates.

The Société d’Études Juridique du Katanga (SEJK) produces the reviews of the colonial center of Elisabethville. Created during the month of September 1924, the purpose of the SEJK is “the development of colonial legal studies” and “the publication of a journal”. It brings together doctors of law residing in Elisabethville and Katanga. Its committee is chaired by the essential Antoine Sohier, then Deputy Attorney General at the Court of Appeal of Elisabethville.

The sources used to write this section are :

  • TOUSIGNANT Nathalie, « The Belgian colonial experience and legal journals (1908-1960) : An overview » (TBA).
  • « Sohier Antoine Joseph " In Biographie Belge d’Outre-Mer, Brussels, Académie royale des sciences d’Outre-Mer, t. VIII, 1998, col. 392-406.
  • BOURS Léon, « La chronique judiciaire. Le 25e anniversaire de la Société d’Études Juridiques du Katanga », in Journal des Tribunaux d’Outre-mer, n°1, 1950, p. 8-10.

Section produced with the collaboration of Guillaume Vaneukem as part of an internship in the communication of history (UCL, 2nd master in history).