Fa’Amatai And The Land And Titles Court: Identifying Sites Of Customary Authority In Contemporary Samoa

Abstract

The 2020 Land and Titles Court (LTC) reforms in Samoa were a catalyst for the constitutional crisis which sent shockwaves through the Pacific. This paper analyses what the debate surrounding these reforms, as well as the reforms themselves, reveal about fa’amatai (Samoa’s indigenous political system). Due to the reforms, LTC decisions can no longer be appealed to the Supreme Court, removing the ability for customary decisions to be balanced against Constitutional individual rights. The debate around these reforms often hinged on whether Constitutional rights impede the exercise of customary authority. This paper identifies the different hierarchical structures of customary authority in Samoa and articulates how they have evolved to accommodate the LTC and Constitutional rights. It argues that as fa’amatai has evolved to survive colonisation, the LTC itself and to some degree individual Constitutional rights have come to form a core part of the fa’amatai today.