COMMERCIAL LAW REPORTS NIGERIA
Commercial Law Reports Nigeria (CLRN) is a specialized report in the area of commercial law established since 2004. As the name implies, the report focuses on core areas of commercial law such as trademarks and intellectual property, contracts and other commercial obligations; shipping and maritime disputes; company law and corporate governance; revenue law and tax appeals; employment law; arbitration and banking matters all of which come within the publisher's contemplation, although the categories remain open.
The obvious objective of the publishers in establishing CLRN was to meet an obligation to fill a much needed vacuum and to deliver to the legal public a contribution for posterity and the furtherance of legal expertise. This however has remained our commitment. Commercial Law Reports, Nigeria is unique in its style in that it employs affirmative statements in its headlines to quote portions of the judge's decision thus, bringing a researcher closer to locating in quick time the actual decision that is being sought.
Furthermore, unlike other reports, CLRN seeks to distinguish the ratio decidendi in the judgment from the obiter dictum in order to arrest the steady and growing practice whereby the courts are being led to follow precedents that are otherwise not binding on them. Another unique feature of CLRN is the re-introduction of reported High Court decisions in the life of law reporting since until same becomes a subject of appeal and eventually set aside by an appellate court, it remains a statement of the position of the law on the matter decided and as such becomes of immense value to the commercial law practitioner in his role as adviser.
As most are aware, CLRN began as a monthly publication in 2004 and ran as such till December of 2008. The publisher's however decided to go quarterly from 2009 due to the paucity and availability of core commercial judgments and in order to retain our vision to remain a truly specialized report. In january 2012, we resumed monthly publications again. Also in the works and to take effect from the 1st quarter of 2011 is the establishment of the CLRN online, which is a medium in which the soft copy of our reports would be made available to our esteemed subscribers.
All said the obvious challenge has been to sustain this laudable effort into the future to remain an institution for all scholars, practitioners and judges alike and after seven years of publication we remain committed to maintaining international best practices available in many common law jurisdictions.