Rwanda Law Journal
Journal / Rwanda Law Journal / Submissions

 

I. About the Journal

The Rwanda Law Journal is an open-access peer-reviewed journal that aims to offer a critical analysis of Rwandan law and practice, or a comparative analysis of Rwandan law with other laws from other jurisdictions with the ultimate objective to improve on the Law and the practice of Law in Rwanda and beyond.

The journal was established in 2018 and is affiliated to the Institute of Legal Practise and Development (ILPD) in collaboration with the University of Rwanda-School of Law.

The Rwanda Law Journal does not charge article processing fees nor does it pay authors for submission of their articles.

II. Types of Articles the Journal is accepting

The Editorial Board shall determine the type of written works that shall be accepted for publication. Given the goals of the Rwanda Law Journal, two types are now recommended: lead articles and case notes/commentaries.

a) Lead Articles

Lead articles shall focus on relevant issues in Rwandan law and beyond. These articles shall revolve around discussions by the authors in an attempt to explain complex legal issues that the legal community is facing. They can range from administrative, judicial, legislative topics as well discussions about the government, political and various other topics that are relevant to the growth and development of the Rwandan and other legal infrastructures. The purpose of the lead articles is to foster debate or informative critical analysis on the current position of the Rwandan legal system or any other legal system and to encourage an open discussion about relevant issues, with the goal of strengthening the sector and educating others in the field.

b) CaseNotes/Commentaries

Commentaries shall focus on individual judicial opinions issued by the higher courts. However, these commentaries shall do more than simply discuss the opinion of the Court. They should be of analytical nature and written in such a way as to do the following: explain the case or controversy brought before the Court, discuss the decision of the Court, analyse and explain why the Court made the decision that it did, predict the impact on future cases or laws that the decision shall have, and possibly either agree or disagree with the decision of the Court through an analytical and comparative discussion using previous decisions, laws, or other information. The purpose of the commentaries is to analyse and discuss judicial decisions in a way that may help contextualize decisions in the broader legal framework, or possibly influence future actions on law or cases, or how cases are argued in the future.

III. Guidelines for Submitting Articles

1. a)  Authors are invited to submit articles that fall within the scope of the Rwanda Law Journal.

2. b)  Rwanda Law Journal receives submissions with the understanding that the content is original, unpublished material and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere, whether in print or in electronic form.

3. c)  ArticlesshouldbewritteninclearUKEnglish.IfEnglishisnothis/herfirstlanguage, It is advised that his/her manuscript be professionally edited prior to submission. This may help to ensure that the content of his/her article is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. However, he/she should note that language editing does not guarantee that his/her manuscript shall be accepted for publication.

4. d)  When submitting articles, authors should submit two separate documents. The first document is a “Submission Page.” This document shall include all of the author’s contact information, which is the author’s full names, author’s physical address, author’s phone number, author’s email address, and the author’s occupation. The “Submission Page” shall also include a footnote about the author to include in the article. This footnote is to give a brief explanation about the author and their work as to familiarize readers with the author when reading the article.

   The second document to be submitted is the actual article. It is required that when the article is submitted all identifying features have been removed and it is completely anonymous. The only persons that shall be aware of the author’s identity prior to peer review and publication are those in charge of receiving submissions at the general secretariat and distributing them to the peer-reviewers.

5. e)  The second document submitted – the actual article – is to be formatted precisely to the guidelines set forth by the journal

6. f)  The submission file has to be sent electronically in an editable word-processed computer file to facilitate the work of reviewers and editors. shall

7. g)  The article title should be concise, with a maximum of 100 characters.

8. h)  ThestructureofsubmissionsshallincludeAbstract,Introduction,thematicsections, subsections or sub subsections with numerical designations, conclusion and cited references (Bibliography).

9. i)  Texts must be saved in a simple format, i.e. without automatic hyphenation, automatic indexing of section headings, with a consistent script, with an unjustified right margin, and no activated hyperlinks or other macros but use non-automatic Arabic numerals or hyphens instead.

10. j)  The abstract should be Italicised and be a single paragraph of not more than 350 words.

11. k)  The abstract should summarize the article’s main issues under discussion, the methodology used, and the contribution made by the article. Once the article is accepted for publication, this abstract shall also be added to the free search zone of the Online databases.

12. l)  To boost the search engine optimization of his/her article, the author should provide a maximum of five keywords that describe the content of his/her contribution. Each key term is expected to have a single word, or a maximum of two words in a single term.

13. m)  The text of the article is to be 1.5 spaced and written in 12-point font in Californian FB.

14. n)  The author shall also employ footnotes instead of endnotes when writing citations. The footnotes shall also be written with Californian FB font, but shall be in size 10-point font and single-spaced.

15. o)  Authors should make sure that all changes have been accepted and turn off the track
    changes.

16. p)  If there are notes, authors should insert footnotes (notes are not allowed in (sub)titles)

17. q)  Short quotations up to 3 lines should appear in quotation marks in the text with a superscript footnote reference, while quotations of more than 3 lines should be indented from the left and be physically separate from the paragraph to indicate that it is to be set as a separate block of text.

18. r)  The original capitalization, spelling, etc. of the quotation should be preserved. The author should place any change made to a quoted text between square brackets unless he uses an ellipsis to indicate omissions within the quoted text: (...). If he wishes to

add specific emphasis to part of the quoted text, this should be done by the use of italics, and “(emphasis added)” should be added to the source note.

19. s)  Only the headings 1 and 2 should be capitalized while the next ones should be italicised. The Rwanda Law Journal proposes the following heading levels for example:

    1. RWANDAN LEGAL SYSTEM 1.1. INTRODUCTION
    1.1.1. Key definitions

20. t)  Consistency and accuracy are two of the most important rules to be followed in the citation of legal authorities. To help authors achieve these, they are required to use a form of legal citation called OSCOLA (Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities) in their footnotes and bibliographies.

    The latest version of OSCOLA and additional rules for the citation of sources can be found at: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/publications/oscola. Alternatively, authors can contact the library staff at ILPD for assistance).

21. u)  The articles shall not exceed 12,000 words(or30pages), and commentaries on judicial decisions shall not exceed 5,000 words (or 10 pages).
    
    

    IV. Copyright ownership

    The Authors submitting an article do so on the understanding that if accepted for publication, copyright of the article shall be assigned to Rwanda Law Journal and the Institute of Legal Practice and Development as the publisher of the journal. A completed and signed consent to publish form, which shall be sent by the Chief Editor, must accompany each paper. By signing the form, the author(s) states to accept to assign the copyrights to the Institute. In assigning his/their copyright they are not forfeiting their rights to use their paper elsewhere after publication in the journal. This may be done provided that the journal is acknowledged as the original source.

    V. Privacy Statement

    a) Where the Editorial Team deems it necessary, the editors may remove precise reference to names of individuals in case commentaries.

    b) The names and email addresses submitted to and published in Rwanda Law Journal shall not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

    VI. Disclaimer

    Opinions expressed in articles, case notes/commentaries and sharing thoughts do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board, or the publisher of the journal. By signing the consent to publish form, the author (s) certifies that his/her paper contains no matter that is scandalous, obscene, libelous, or otherwise contrary to law.