The Unfinished Mandate: Institutional Inertia and Constitutional Deferral in Somaliland’s Penal Law Reform

<title>Abstract</title> <p>Somaliland’s criminal justice system continues to operate under the 1962 Penal Code, a statute inherited from a pre-independence legal order that predates the country’s 2001 Constitution. This article examines why penal law reform in Somaliland has repeatedly stalled despite a clear constitutional mandate for legislative reconciliation. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with ten practicing lawyers in Hargeisa, purposively sampled from the Somaliland Lawyers Association register, and a doctrinal analysis of the 1962 Penal Code and the 2001 Constitution, the study applies institutional theory, path dependency theory, and legal pluralism theory to explain the persistence of reform inertia. Thematic analysis, following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase framework, identified eight themes spanning weak inter-institutional coordination, bureaucratic and legislative delay, the structural influence of legal pluralism among statutory law, Sharia, and Xeer, unresolved constitutional inconsistencies, and an erosion of public trust. All participants agreed that the Penal Code cannot address contemporary offences such as cybercrime and digital fraud, and that this gap has weakened confidence in formal justice institutions. Document analysis further revealed that the Constitution’s own reform clause, Article 130, imposes an obligation to reconcile inconsistent laws but delegates its timeline to parliamentary discretion, a discretion that institutional inertia has left unexercised. The study conceptualizes this dynamic as a self-reinforcing cycle in which institutional, legal, and social barriers continuously reinforce one another. It argues that overcoming reform stagnation requires simultaneously revitalizing the Law Reform Commission, modernizing penal law coverage, and rebuilding institutional legitimacy through inclusive, nationally owned engagement with Somaliland’s plural legal order.</p>