A Law lecturer at the University of Ghana has not only ruffled feathers with his unconventional research on judges and their political affiliations but has suggested that members of the General Legal Council should have been in jail by now.
According to Prof Raymond Atuguba, members of the GLC, the regulatory body of the law education and profession in Ghana, were liable to ten years jail term and will not be able to hold any public office for a period of ten years.
Their offence Prof Atuguba noted, was their failure to respect a Supreme Court decision on the controversial admission process into the law school.
“If we are going strictly by the constitution, by now the entire General Legal Council should be in Nsawam because the Supreme Court decision on it has not been complied by the GLC.
“So under Article 2,3,4, 5 where you do not obey the decision of the Supreme Court, it is characterized as a high crime and the penalty is 10 years in jail without the option of a fine and after that for ten years you don’t have the chance to be a public officer,” he stated while disclosing the outcome of his research into justices and their supposed political bias expressed through their verdicts.
The Supreme Court in June 2017 declared as unconstitutional, the entrance exams and interviews employed by the GLC for its admission process into the law school.
The justices gave the GLC six months to rectify the anomaly by passing an L.I which will legalize the entrance exams.
More than seven months after that ruling the GLC has failed to ensure the passage of the L.I.
This Atuguba believes is unacceptable.
The law lecturer is calling for a strict public scrutiny of decisions by judges as a way of moderating judicial excesses.
He said if the country is to sustain its democracy, judicial criticism must be encouraged.
“The judiciary is not comfortable with public scrutiny but if our democracy is to sustain we must be brave enough to scrutinize the judiciary,” he said.
