92 Kabumba/Application of African Union (human rights) law in Uganda the ‘building blocks’ of the AU.7 These are: the East African Community (EAC); the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS); the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU); the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CENSAD); the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA); the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). 2 2.1 A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY AND TERMINOLOGY Case identification and data set The review considered cases available online, primarily those contained in the Uganda Legal Information Institute (ULII) database.8 A search was made through the ULII records, using all possible permutations of relevant code words and combinations thereof, so as to identify all applicable case law. The various cases highlighted were then appropriately categorised, and subsequently analysed. This approach – of reliance on an online search rather than a survey of print law reports – was adopted for two reasons. In the first place, the tradition of law reporting in Uganda has been neither consistently nor rigorously maintained, especially after the late 1980s. The result is that many key decisions of courts of Judicature (High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court) remain unreported. Some of these have been availed online either through fee-charging portals, such as Uganda Online Law Library or the open-access ULII database. Secondly, the ULII database allowed for a more systematic and quicker collection and analysis of relevant case law, through a relevant key word search, than might have been possible with print reports. The study is, therefore, based upon and limited to this particular data set. The reliance on case law available online, and the ULII database in particular, admittedly presents a limitation upon the comprehensiveness of the study findings. At the same time, if understood as an in-depth examination of a specific sample – Ugandan jurisprudence available through ULII covering a particular time period – then it is possible that the insights provided herein might provide some useful indicators as to the more general position. 7 8 The reference to these RECs as ‘building blocks’ of the AU is contained in the official websites of the African Union – see https://au.int/en/organs/recs (accessed 15 January 2019); and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) – see https://www.uneca.org/oria/pages/regional-economiccommunities (accessed 15 January 2019). The AU website, in this regard, references the Abuja Treaty, the AU Constitutive Act, the 2008 Protocol on Relations between RECs and the AU, and the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Area of Peace and Security between the AU, RECs and the Coordinating Mechanisms of the Regional Standby Brigades of Eastern and Northern Africa. See https://ulii.org (accessed 15 January 2019).