ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE HONOURABLE LADY CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE GERTRUDE SACKEY TORKORNOO, AT THE 61ST CALL TO THE BAR Date: Friday, 11th October, 2024 Venue: Accra International Conference Centre
Source: judicial_service_of_ghana
Date: 2024-10-14

ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE HONOURABLE LADY CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE GERTRUDE SACKEY TORKORNOO, AT THE 61ST CALL TO THE BAR Date: Friday, 11 th October, 2024 Venue: Accra International Conference Centre Theme: “The Journey of Law in a Changing World”. My Lords Justices of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court who form the Superior Courts of Judicature The Judicial Secretary of Ghana The Honourable Minister of Justice and Attorney-General with The Deputy Minister, Hon. Diana Asonaba Dapaah The Honourable Ministers for Communication, Works and Housing and Minister of Education The Director, Ghana School of Law, Justice Nana Yaw Barima Kodie Deans, Directors and Rectors of the various campuses of the Ghana School of Law, Members of the General Legal Council and other Councils of the Judiciary and the Ghana Bar Associations The National President and Executives of the Ghana Bar Association Your Honors and Worships Beloved families, friends, sponsors and guardians of the our new cohort of lawyers enrolled in October 2024, Distinguished Invited Guests Our Partners in the Media Huge Congratulations to all new lawyers, parents, families, significant others, lecturers and administrators of the Ghana School of Law and its various campuses, and all who have been part of this tough and ardous journey of realizing the dreams and goals of becoming a lawyer. Thank you for helping our new lawyers, and thank you to the lawyers for making it your commitment to make the sacrifices that have brought you to the new laurel you hold this morning. May the Lord of Heaven bless your journey of being a lawyer, and make you a lawyer par excellence. We wish you well and cheer you on. In my address this morning, I wish to have a conversation titled ‘The journey of the lawyer in a changing world’. The journey of studying law itself should not go beyond two to four years of an undergraduate course, and two years of a professional course. During these years, every lawyer in a common law jurisdiction is expected to study a minimum of seven legal disciplines at the undergraduate stage, and any number of courses at the Professional level thereafter, depending on the jurisdiction of the country. In the last years, some of you have been on this journey for more than the expected or stipulated five years. But of course, even when it is just five years, this Journey of becoming a lawyer is still a very long journey. Many started with you, and are yet to complete all required papers. Some almost breasted the tape, but for acts that raised questions about their integrity, compelling the General Legal Council, to conduct further investigations into these issues. You have passed the tests of competence and moral character. At every stage in this journey, you have had to stretch your minds to new concepts, doctrines, precepts and structures of law. This is why we must say a very deserving Ayekoo to all of you who have been able to endure and complete this program of study. Now that you have finished these studies as a foundation for knowing the law, you are going to encounter the real scope of the law and the extent to which law is the foundation of every human activity. You are going to find that the fact situations you have to deal with in solving problems are as many as the experiences of life. The world is a continuously evolving and changing place, from a simple examination of history. The historical, sociological and political structures of humanity in antiquity are not the same or even similar to the world that we are in now. Neither is the world of even the last century, the 20 th century, anything like that of this early part of the 21 st century. Until 1980s, technologies did not exist to see people beyond the physical sphere unless it was in photographs and big screen movie. Now, following the technology that introduced television, we have moved rapidly through video to ability to see each other in real time no matter which end of the world communicants are in. Even more mind boggling, we have found that technology exists now which is able to make us see people act and speak in ways that they actually have not done and spoken. So not only can we record videos, but we can superimpose image and activity with algorithms that are designed to replace reality. The era of internet and artificial intelligence has thrown us into the era of fake news, misinformation and disinformation. This opens up vistas of both criminal and civil law beyond anything that we can anticipate. And with all of this, we need to be keenly conscious of the fact that human conduct and innovation does not wait for law. It is law that always has to catch up with human conduct. So the grand issue facing all of us in this country, as part of the global community and in the face of virtual reality and digital technology that we now use seamlessly is – how do we navigate with legality the global community of ‘netizens’ and activities that technology has thrust us into. As part of the global community, Ghana cannot side step its participation in every form of economy that technology is introducing. Entertainment has changed, even currency is taking on a global character, including every day trading and communication. What are the legal precepts that we will need to resolve issues that arise within political communications engineered among netizens – that is citizens who are only linked by interests, objectives and subjects, citizens who do not owe allegiance and loyalty to a physical territory because the community is only virtual and in the air. Law school cannot go on beyond five years, but legal learning must go on beyond the end of law school. Thus at best, what you went through in the last five years just provided you with skills on how to learn the art of construing, interpreting, applying, and administering law. As you leave here with your certificates, you are supposed to use those skills, knowledge and values given in law school to serve your communities. This will include the ability to evaluate, the ability to distil facts, find the applicable law, evaluate, reason, structure and weave applicable law into solving problems. These are hard tasks and would be hard tasks without the current blurred and manipulatable state of the world. Even worse is the situation that we do not even know the direction of this digital landscape, in order to gather the materials that will give us appropriate legal principles to direct situations that develop and evolve as innovators continue with their work. Your time in school taught you to become experts in skills, values, concepts and in this blurred world of netizens, virtual realities, etc, we must all learn to use that expertise to handle what the future brings. And we cannot help but be reminded that in every wave of history, every tide of history, through slavery, industrialization, colonization, and wars, it is law that has provided the structure and support for proper social engineering. Even in war, it is the laws of war that assist human kind to carry on that nasty activity without totally annihilating everyone off the planet. If evil is to be kept at bay, law, lawyering, orderliness and legality has to be at the front of the march. So I invite you to resolve to continue to be committed learners otherwise you cannot serve society in this fast changing world. You should leave here resolved to lead your communities with consistently refreshed knowledge in order not to destroy the expectations of society. You should resolve to be good citizens, and nothing else. Ghana as a nation has always been led by lawyers. Within this context, it is important for us to remember that Ghana as it is now, was not a nation until 1956. History provides the information that all the different parts of Ghana finally came together only one year before independence in 1957. And almost immediately with independence in 1957, we had to start learning how to accommodate each other, trust each other, work together, and harmonize our legal environment to build the nation. Anger, disappointment, discontent led to three major disruptions in our bid to be ruled by Constitutionalism and the rule law and nothing but law. The 1960 Constitution was disrupted in 1966; the 1969 Constitution was disrupted in 1971. The 1979 Constitution was disrupted in 1981. Fortunately and blessedly, the 1992 Constitution is still going strong thirty-two years later. From this narrative, our country has flowed and ebbed and moved in waves. When the nation is on high tide, lawyers are there to support the shaping of the nation. In low tide, it is lawyers who must be there to support the nation. Lawyers must not be part of destructive conversations or activities that break a nation up. Lawyers must not be part of activities that destroy the national economy whether it is the political economy, environmental economy or social economy. Lawyers must be those who rally around with knowledge, doctrines, precepts, values and skills to build the nation up in every circumstance of growth. It is a big charge and all we have is the five years of learning that provide knowledge in twenty plus courses. That is the infrastructural resource that you have been given. The rest of it, you, like all of us in the legal fraternity, must find the law, and bring it to grow our nation. You bring that knowledge to help with social engineering. As you take your place in the community of lawyers, may God bless our homeland Ghana and make her great and strong because you joined this honourable learned fraternity. Because you joined the fraternity of the law, let is be said that our nation became greater and stronger in this time of its history. Let me close by speaking about the pupillage you need before you can receive your practicing license. Ladies and gentlemen, you have sacrificed money, time, sleep and so much to become lawyers. Let it not be said that you could not get a practising license because you did not convince the General Legal Council that you had done your 6 months pupillage. There are not enough law firms in Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi to accommodate all of you. Please find out where law firms are around the country, stay in other parts of the country, work with law firms there and get this critical part of the professional requirement out of the way. Enjoy more of our country as part of your training. God bless you and congratulations again and again. Prev Next