Appointments Committee of Parliament to vet Chief Justice nominee
The Appointments Committee of Parliament (ACP) will, today, vet Ms Justice Sophia Akuffo, who has been nominated by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the position of Chief Justice.
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The Chairman and the ranking members of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and the Judicial committees of the House have also been invited by the ACP to be part of the process of grilling the Chief Justice nominee.
According to the Chairman of the ACP, Mr Joseph Osei-Wusu, each member of the committee would be given a maximum of 20 minutes to pose questions to the Chief Justice nominee.
He said should all members of the committee exhaust the 20 minutes alloted to them, it would mean the vetting process could last about 11 hours.
Mr Osei-Wusu said the committee had agreed there would be no scrutiny of Ms Justice Akuffo’s curriculum vitae (CV) but said “members are, however, free to ask individual questions on the CV”.
Ms Akuffo takes over from Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, who retired on June 8, 2017, after 10 years as Chief Justice and 47 years in the public service.
The vetting was originally slated for Monday, June 19, 2017 but was brought forward to today to prevent any long period of vacuum that could be created by the retirement of Mrs Justice Wood.
A period of 14 days was given to the public to file any petition challenging the nomination of the new Chief Justice, but, according to Mr Osei-Wusu, no petition had been submitted to the ACP yet.
Profile
Ms Justice Akuffo has been at the Supreme Court for the past two decades. She has a master’s degree in Law (LL.M) from the Havard University in the United States of America (USA).
She has been a member of the Governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute and Chairperson of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Task Force.
In January 2006, she was elected one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and was re-elected until 2014 when she served as the Vice-President. She is the immediate past President of the court.
She is on the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council and has held membership of many organisations.
Her publications include: The Application of Information & Communications Technology in the Judicial Process - The Ghanaian Experience, presented to the African Judicial Network Ghana (2002).