Reading the Chief Justice’s paper to President Nana Akufo-Addo on the need for a minimum of twenty judges on the Supreme Court’s bench, I am left convinced that what is needed is a much more fundamental and structural approach.
In my view, the paper needs more data on other parts of the judicial value chain.
My favourite former teacher and current Chief Justice will be well served to consult logistics experts; those who also have competence in understanding the legal/judicial process.
This matter requires a technology appendix. It is also fundamentally about managing sources of generation of cases. Why do land issues and chieftaincy issues come up so much in Ghana, for example? The courts in Singapore and in China do not spend much time on such matters. Why not?
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Also, there are basic improvements that can be made in scheduling, inventory management and capacity planning. Parts of the paper cry out for that.
Then, if these practices are still in place, we must get sociologists and psychologists to help deal with them.
Can we jettison the requirements that judges:
– read their judgments in open court? In today’s world that is, in my view, unnecessary.
– Some kind, young whipper snapper of an IT expert should do a project in one of our universities. How much time is spent in our courtrooms saying: “My Lord this, My Lord that, My Lord what what what …” Scrap those suffocating rituals.
– In the technology environment of today, I have said so many times as a layperson, that courtrooms can be decongested significantly. If proceedings that do not require in-camera treatment are accessible online (to those qualified to see them). Then all the people that pile up in the courts, waiting for cases to be called, and ostensibly learning from seniors, may not need to be in one room. This may leave more oxygen for judges to breathe and thrive.
– I am not at all ageist. I believe that while Biden may have health challenges, his issue though is not age. There are many people much older than 81 who have more intact cognitive faculties than he has put on display recently. So, I see the Chief Justice’s reference to an average age of 64. Yet I do not think it is a major problem if we are practicing world-class HR management.
– Finally, I suggest that the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court be properly discussed. And whatever necessary modifications are required to stop unnecessary litigation extending there should be put in place.
I have no position on what the optimum numbers are. But we must be careful that this open-ended road to expanding the Supreme Court does not lead us to disaster someday. I again make the point that we must cap the number of Supreme Court judges, whatever that number is.
We now know some of the features of chronic factionalism that, sadly, characterise our “actually existing Santa Claus democracy.” We must place a cap to protect the judicial system from a day when a President acts, with a JSC that may have been reduced to running dogs of the executive, to pack the courts with lackeys.
Yaw Nsarkoh,
9 July 2024.
