A University Don, Dr. Akin Oluwadayisi, has called for sufficient compensation for judges at retirement for their labour on written judgments, recommending tax on legal publishing of case reports as source of funding.
Dr. Oluwadayisi, a senior lecturer and Head of Department of Jurisprudence and International Law, Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State, made the call while delivering a paper at the All Universities' Law Librarian Workshop/Conference, organised by the Council of Legal Education at the Nigerian Law School, Abuja, on Wednesday, July 20, 2025.
According to him, although court judgments were for public consumption and can be published under the doctrine of "fair use," the economic and labour theories of intellectual property rights suggest a balanced application of this principle.
He argued that private firms that publish law reports often benefit financially from the venture without adequately compensating the judges who authored the judgments.
Dr. Oluwadayisi drew attention to the significant labour and effort that goes into writing judgments, sometimes spanning thousands of pages. He noted that private firms often "repackage" these judgments and profit from them without contributing to the welfare of the judges.
He recommended that companies be required to contribute a percentage of their profits from legal publishing to a fund that would support judges' welfare at retirement and the judiciary at large, suggesting a contribution rate of 3-5% of profits, similar to the practice of companies contributing to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) in Nigeria.
Dr. Oluwadayisi also expressed concerns about the impact of electronic law report publishing on research in law, particularly for undergraduate long essays, master's dissertations, and PhD theses that were subjected to plagiarism checks and Turnitin. He lamented that judgments written by judges, who are public officers, are increasingly becoming the "copyright" of electronic law reporters rather than the court when legal writings are made to pass through plagiarism checks.
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