Law of Landlord and Tenant in Ghana

The present work brings to completion my effort to state the complete law of property of Ghana. It was inspired by my earlier work on the customary land law of Ghana. The customary law remains the heart of the Ghanaian land law, but the story of the property law of Ghana is incomplete without a comprehensive account of the received law of property. The present work, therefore, brings to a full circle my efforts to state accurately and wholly the property law of Ghana. The field of Ghanaian property law is dominated by a combination of foreign and indigenous concepts. Arguably, the theoretical aspects of the property law of Ghana stand in need of resolution of the tensions between the two sources of law. The development of the English law of property was deeply marked by the early activities of the King's Court and its administration of a centralised system of law as distinguished from an earlier system of localised customary law, varying from place to place. Modified by equity, its doctrines were developed from a centralised system of records. A course in property law ought to equip the student with the entire range of concepts in the field, closely analysed. Described elsewhere as a rubbish heap that has been accumulating for centuries and understood only by the professors, the English law of property does not lend itself to easy understanding. Imposing structure upon a subject comprising essentially English law of property and applying it to Ghanaian circumstances has not been easy. To help the student grasp the interlocking nature of the concepts, and to gain rounded and more profound insights about the various rights and liabilities attached to interests in land, a persistent effort is made to connect the material to Ghanaian cases and statutes. Intended to complement the larger works on the law of real property, much of this book derives from the experience of teaching property law to students at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana. For over ten years now, I have been involved in the teaching of courses in land law to various groups of students, coming as they do from a background where an encounter with law teaching is invariably new. Many have contributed novel ideas and insights, and the great majority require a sound grounding in a very important aspect of our law. The focus is to equip them with a solid academic basis both for a subsequent course in conveyancing and for effective legal practice. The older books on the property law of Ghana belong to the last century, written, as the majority are, in the 1960s and 1970s. In organisation and scope this book is in two parts: historical development of English ideas of property and the law of landlord and tenant embracing leases and the Rent Act, 1963. I have clearly left out of the present work the subjects of registration of land and State intervention in land ownership as well as a number of statutory matters as they were adequately covered in my previous works.