By Alexander Kukah
At a time when political disputes can move from the campaign trail to the courtroom within hours, the idea of a court going on vacation may appear strange to the ordinary citizen.
Yet, every year, Ghana’s superior courts observe periods of legal vacation. The Judiciary’s official calendar provides for Christmas, Easter and a long vacation, with the latter running from 1 August to 30 September.
For judges and lawyers, it is a necessary pause in an otherwise demanding profession. For litigants, however, particularly those involved in urgent constitutional, electoral or criminal matters, it can sometimes feel like justice itself has gone on holiday.
That tension raises an important question: Is legal vacation simply a necessary feature of an efficient justice system, or can it become an instrument that delays justice and, potentially, a political tool?
A necessary break for the legal profession
Judicial work is not ordinary office work. Judges are required to read enormous volumes of material, listen to competing arguments, interpret legislation and the Constitution, and make decisions that can profoundly affect the lives of individuals and institutions.
Lawyers face similar pressures. Court deadlines, research, drafting, client consultations and appearances can create an intense working environment.
Legal vacation therefore serves a legitimate purpose. It gives judicial officers and legal practitioners an opportunity to rest, undertake professional development and prepare for the new legal year.
The Judiciary itself continues to recognise the value of this period. In a recent account of judicial practice, the Judicial Service noted that judges use the legal vacation for activities including overseas study visits connected with their quinquennial leave.
The important point is that legal vacation does not necessarily mean that the justice system shuts down.
The Ghanaian Judiciary has arrangements for vacation courts and urgent matters. Its current virtual-court system, for example, lists vacation courts handling land, financial, general-jurisdiction and criminal matters.
When vacation becomes a problem
The difficulty begins when the institutional need for rest collides with the public’s need for urgent justice.
A court case involving a commercial disagreement may survive a few weeks’ delay. An electoral dispute may not.
If an injunction is sought to stop an electoral exercise that is scheduled to begin within days, every day matters. By the time the court eventually hears the case, the event that the applicant wanted to stop may already have taken place.
That is precisely why legal vacation can become controversial.
The issue is not necessarily whether judges deserve a break. They do. The issue is whether the judicial calendar should be allowed to determine the timing of justice in matters whose consequences cannot wait.
The Ghanaian political test
Ghana experienced a particularly instructive controversy in 2023.
The National Democratic Congress and four other political parties — the CPP, APC, LPG and GCPP — sued the Electoral Commission over its decision to conduct the limited voter-registration exercise at its district offices. The parties argued that the arrangement could make registration difficult for some eligible voters and sought an injunction against the exercise.
The case quickly became political.
The registration exercise commenced on 12 September 2023. Meanwhile, the opposition complained that the Supreme Court had not provided a date for the injunction application. NDC Chairman Johnson Asiedu Nketia went as far as describing the delay as evidence of “judicial manipulation.”
Former President John Mahama also criticised the delay, arguing that it undermined public confidence in justice delivery.
The Judiciary, however, offered a different explanation.
When the matter eventually came before the Supreme Court, then Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo explained that the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal did not ordinarily sit during the August–September legal vacation. Although the High Court could hear certain matters during vacation, there was no similar ordinary arrangement for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. She said the Supreme Court could have dealt with the application only under an exceptional special arrangement.
The case was eventually struck out after the applicants or their lawyers failed to appear to move the application.
This episode exposed the uncomfortable space between law, politics and public perception.
Can legal vacation be used as a political weapon?
The answer requires caution.
There is no basis simply to conclude that the Judiciary deliberately uses vacation to favour one political party. Such an allegation would require evidence.
But legal vacation can nevertheless become politically consequential.
A political party can bring a case immediately before a vacation period. A government decision can take effect while the courts are not sitting ordinarily. An electoral process can continue while litigation challenging it is pending.
The political consequences may therefore be significant even where the judicial officers themselves are acting entirely within established rules.
This creates an important distinction:
Legal vacation may not itself be a political tool, but its timing and operation can be exploited for political advantage.
That possibility is particularly serious in electoral disputes.
The danger of politicising the Judiciary
There is another side to the problem.
If every politically sensitive case is treated as an emergency requiring the courts to abandon their established calendar, politicians may gradually acquire the ability to dictate when courts should sit.
That would be equally dangerous.
Judicial independence requires judges to decide cases according to law rather than political pressure. Ghana’s Supreme Court, which marked its 150th anniversary in 2026, has played a central role in constitutional governance and democratic stability. The Judiciary has itself emphasised its constitutional role and the importance of judicial independence.
The solution, therefore, cannot be for politicians to determine when judges should work.
The solution must instead be clear, predictable rules for emergencies.
What should Ghana do?
Ghana does not necessarily need to abolish legal vacation.
Instead, the country could strengthen the mechanisms that allow genuinely urgent matters to be dealt with during vacation.
Electoral disputes, constitutional emergencies, cases involving personal liberty and matters where delay could render a remedy meaningless should receive particularly careful treatment.
Technology may also provide part of the answer. The Judiciary’s expansion of e-Justice, including electronic filing, digital service, virtual hearings and real-time case tracking, offers opportunities to reduce procedural delays and improve access to justice.
The objective should be simple: judges should be able to rest without justice becoming inaccessible.
The real question is not whether courts should rest
Legal vacation is not inherently an enemy of justice.
Judges are human beings. Lawyers are human beings. A justice system that demands uninterrupted work from its personnel risks sacrificing quality for quantity.
But the justice system also exists for the litigant.
For the citizen whose constitutional right is at stake, the voter whose registration is in question, the accused person awaiting determination of a criminal matter, or the individual facing an urgent threat to liberty or property, justice cannot always wait for the next legal year.
The 2023 Electoral Commission litigation demonstrated this tension vividly. It showed how an established judicial practice can collide with the speed of democratic politics and how, in that collision, accusations of judicial manipulation can emerge even where the Judiciary maintains that it is simply following its rules.
The challenge for Ghana is therefore not to choose between judicial rest and access to justice.
It is to design a system in which both can coexist.
Legal vacation should remain a period for renewal, reflection and institutional preparation. But where the circumstances are genuinely urgent, the doors of justice must remain sufficiently open.
Because when citizens begin to believe that justice can be postponed simply because the courts are on vacation, the damage goes beyond one case. It can affect confidence in the entire justice system.
And in a democracy, public confidence in the courts is not a luxury.
It is part of the foundation on which the rule of law stands.
Story By:Alexander Kukah