SPEECH BY HER LADYSHIP THE CHIEF JUSTICE ON THE OPENING OF THE 2024/2025 ANNUAL GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE GHANA BAR ASSOCIATION Date: 9th September 2024
Source: judicial_service_of_ghana
Date: 2024-09-13

SPEECH BY HER LADYSHIP THE CHIEF JUSTICE ON THE OPENING OF THE 2024/2025 ANNUAL GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE GHANA BAR ASSOCIATION Date: 9 th September 2024 Venue: GREAT HALL, KNUST KUMASI Your Excellency the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo Your Royal Majesty Otumfuo Osei Tutu 11, King of the Ashanti kingdom, Nananom and NanaAhemaa herein present, The Vice Chancellor, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Members of the Council of State Honorable Godfred Yeboah Dame, Attorney General and Minister of Justice The Regional Minister of Ashanti Region, Honorable Simon Osei Mensah Honorable Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Members of Parliament present, MMDCEs, Heads of Security Agency My Lords of the Superior Courts, Eminent Clergy, Law Deans, Director of Legal Education, National and Regional Executives of the Ghana Bar Association, distinguished ladies and gentlemen I am greatly delighted to join you this morning to open the Annual Conference of the Ghana Bar Association. The line-up of conference activities, spanning spiritual dedication, intellectual discourses and learning sessions, sporting activities, deliberations on emotionally disturbing issues, and the usual dancing sessions that remain unequalled in exhilaration, reflect the buoyant strength of the Ghana Bar. Clearly, the Ghana Bar Association continues to grow from strength to strength. Thank you for keeping the torch of excellence high. The 2023-2024 legal year was a mountain top experience for me, following the passage of the responsibility of Chief Justice to me in June 2023. Assuredly, God has been with me through this first year in office. I have experienced the grace of good health, sound mind, and the cooperation of the Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary, the Bar and the good people of Ghana. I am extremely grateful and can only say it in what must be two of the most impactful, yet simplest words known to human vocabulary. Thank you. Your Excellency, Your Majesty, distinguished ladies and gentlemen’ the theme of this year’s Bar conference, ‘Peaceful, Fair and Transparent Elections: The Key to Sustainable Democracy’ speaks to what is on the heart of every Ghanaian. The electoral process is a legal process. It is conducted in accordance with a statutory framework. Equally, there are settled legal norms for determining any disputes arising therefrom. This requires that stakeholders come to the electoral process with full recognition and appreciation of the legal regimes surrounding it. Who qualifies to stand as a candidate? What makes a vote valid or invalid? Which court has appropriate jurisdiction to settle an originating petition, or application invoking the supervisory jurisdiction of a court? What is the proper procedure for commencing every type of claims? The Judiciary has always played its part in the electoral process by not only resolving disputes over registration, disputes over parliamentary elections, and disputes over presidential elections, but also maintaining a standing Elections Management Committee chaired by a Supreme Court Judge that works actively with all relevant domestic and international organizations to respond to issues raised during and after the electoral process. In every election cycle commencing with the opening of registration, this Committee tours the country training and overseeing the work of Judges adjudicating related disputes. Since 2008, the Judiciary has also produced a compendium of relevant statute and case law as a guide for stakeholders. This year, we have moved from the one volume compendium to a three volume compendium, allowing for a good sampling of the vast stock of jurisprudence that has developed from the thirty years of the Fourth Republic. I believe that we will be ready to launch it in a few weeks so that stakeholders can familiarize themselves or refresh their memories with the material available. In addition, the Rules of Court Committee has worked on amendments to the High Court Civil Procedure Rules CI 47 2004 to introduce dedicated rules on the resolution of parliamentary elections. It was noted in previous election cycles that the absence of a dedicated time frame for resolution of parliamentary election disputes, and the subjecting of such disputes to the regular procedural rules of court led to horrendous abuse of the adjudicatory process. These amendments seek to address this phenomenon and introduce further measures for expedited hearings such as electronic service of court processes. Further amendment of the Supreme Court Rules CI 16, to improve the time frame for hearing presidential election petitions is also in progress. My humble view, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, is that the relatively peaceful journey that the Fourth Republic has been, is anchored on this consistent addressing of weaknesses found in every election cycle. But as we know, sustaining a democracy calls for more than election cycles. It calls for building strong institutions as well as a population that is committed to the rule of law, whether people function as political activists, media activists or legal activists. As long as actors in the electoral process commit themselves to honor legality over private determinations, our democracy can only grow from strength to strength. Your Excellency, Your Majesty, Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we will all agree that law is the fundamental infrastructure of society. It is needed to plan cities, towns and houses. It is needed to guide the management of rivers, forests and every form of human habitat. It is needed to determine and define governance structures for society – whether as arms of government, institutional, corporate, or traditional governance, and it is needed to guide every form of human relations, from family, commerce to justice administration. To quote Roscoe Pound, justice is always according to law. Soon after I took office, I crafted a vision statement to guide my leadership journey as Chief Justice and to enable all stake holders to work with me towards defined goals. On 8 th April 2024, I presented this vision statement at the LEADing Justice conference. LEAD is an acronym for Law, Ethics, Assets, Digitalization and Due Process. My expectation is that when we, as lawyers, judges, law faculties, Nananom, and all stakeholders in justice administration work together to increase the culture of legality, ethical conduct, and development of critical infrastructure such as digital tools for the mandate entrusted to us, we will achieve the efficiency and just outcomes that the nation deserves. Although all personnel that support the justice delivery function of the judiciary are experts in different fields, more than 99% of our supporting directorates, officers and staff do not have the requisite training on consideration of what affects legality, due process and validity of court processes and proceedings. So it is, with the supporting staff of law offices and legal departments of other institutions. It is from this perspective that apart from resolutely leading the development of manuals, guides and directions for court processes and proceedings, I also set the Judicial Training Institute the task of producing curriculum for paralegal training of all Judicial Service staff. The first batch of this material is ready for use and we are preparing more faculty members to assist in delivering consistent training for all our 7000 plus staff. I am excitedly looking forward to staff of Judicial Service becoming properly trained paralegal secretaries, paralegal accounting personal, and registrars who are equipped as judicial officers, as is the norm in many jurisdictions. I also note other private paralegal training initiatives and the paralegal program at the Legal Aid Commission and with the Ghana Prison Service, to expedite processing of representation for persons unfortunate to find themselves within the grips of criminal charges. I wish to take this opportunity, as Chair of the General Legal Council, to invite the Bar, Academia, Corporate Ghana, and Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), to work with the General Legal Council to mainstream paralegal training into appropriate national learning programs so that non-lawyers who work in law firms, legal departments, and institutions that must produce legally valid processes and documentation, are properly equipped to support the work of the legal profession. Clearly, it is more than high time for us as a nation dedicated to the rule of law, to take a very close look at how we can increase the deepening of knowledge of law and legality, with the attendant culture of choosing validity and due process over arbitrary activities that lead to corruption of public processes. Your Excellency, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the issue of ethical conduct, is a matter that seems to threaten and torment each part of our nation. In the courts, we have been confronted with syndicates working to produce fake marriage and fake divorce and other certificates for persons who seek them for purposes other than lawful and credible reasons. Very active steps are being taken to uncover and stem these practices, and I thank the Ghana Police Service for their work. I would like to encourage all persons to help Judicial management to stamp out such practices, that only go to hurt the reputation of Ghana as an investment destination. It is also necessary for all stakeholders in the law and the nation to appreciate that these unethical practices are found in the preparation of land indentures and other documentation by persons who have no legal training or understanding of what makes for validity. These documents often turn out to be un-registrable, leading to extreme frustration of investors in realizing investment made in immovable property, as well as intractable litigation over land. It is my hope that when we work together to deepen knowledge on legality, threats to the rule of law that citizens labor under daily will be lessened. On the issue of ethics, I must very unhappily refer to the consistently increasing numbers of lawyers that are referred to the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council for unethical practices against their clients. The General Legal Council is actively engaging the Council of Law Deans, concerning the mainstreaming of the study of legal ethics at the faculty level. There seems to be the untoward notion that the law is a route to becoming rich early. However, as officers and guardians of law, I implore lawyers to appreciate their sacred role and reduce the treatment of the law only as an avenue for wealth creation. Lawyers are expected to guide their work towards just outcomes, and nothing more. Indeed, with the increasing numbers of new lawyers being called to the Bar, I have very strongly requested the executive of the Bar Association to communicate to all new lawyers that unless there is a clean and clear record that proves that lawyers have done pupillage, the General Legal Council will not be in a position to license them to practice law in the jurisdiction. So will it be with all conditions required for renewal of practicing licenses. On the progress of the digitalization agenda of the Judiciary, this is irreversible. I am happy to report that we have actively started the digitization of appeal records, so that they are transmitted electronically, thereby reducing the cost of producing multiple records manually and also making their corrections easier. We have also started the process of delivering to the nation a paperless Supreme Court and Court of Appeal registry. It is my ardent prayer that by the time I stand before you next year, God giving us all life, this process would have reached completion. I am also glad to report that the one hundred new courts that continue to be delivered by the District Assembly Common Fund have taken the need for the building of new courts off the table, Your Excellency, your government has achieved this feat still, many courts continue to reflect inordinately high caseloads. From the data received from the current 450 trial courts in operation as at the end of August, 43 have a load higher than 300 cases on their list, and 25 courts have a case load higher than 500, with ten courts burdened by more than 800 cases. This is not healthy for the Judges and all stakeholders in the adjudication process. The response of Judicial management is not to seek the building of new court rooms to solve these anomalies, but to rationalize the use of existing court rooms to cater for areas with higher caseloads, deploy more Judges to assist with high caseloads, and to increase the use of virtual courts. This is what has led to the establishment of afternoon courts and Saturday courts. There are also as many as 63 courts with a case load of fewer than 50 cases on their list. In such courts, we reduce staff, and engage judges that travel itinerantly to sit over those few cases. In conclusion, allow me to alert the Bar of my intention to start a crusade to terminate the culture of ‘mentioning’ cases. This is a practice that hurts everyone involved. Citizens and lawyers leave their businesses and homes to travel to court to do nothing except to hear the title of their case called out. With the introduction of witness statements, the period of court room work has been shortened and all stakeholders in justice delivery are encouraged to use court time efficiently by fixing dates for hearing only after processes have been filed, or expiration of the time statutorily provided for parties to file and serve needed processes. In those circumstances, if a party fails to adhere to the statutorily conferred time for responding with their own processes, courts will be encouraged to conduct hearings without them. My prayer is that the legal community rallies to give the nation effective court experiences, so that the traumatizing history of ‘adjournments’ is erased from the mind of the nation. I thank all stakeholders in the legal and justice sectors for their anticipated support as we get ready for the new legal year. I know the tenure of the current national executive is up and elections for new executives form part of the agenda for this conference. I must articulate my gratitude for the excellent support and cooperation that the current executive have given me this past year. It was a joy working with you, and I look forward to welcoming the new executive to the General Legal Council, the Judicial Council and the Rules of Court Committee. God bless you all, and may He make His face to shine upon the nation as we tackle the on-coming elections in a transparent manner that will sustain Ghana’s democracy. May the Lord give us His peace. On this note, I declare the 2024-2025 Annual General Conference of the Ghana Bar Association duly opened. Prev Next