The University of Ghana School of Law (UGSoL) has reviewed landmark decisions of the Supreme Court, explaining them to the understanding of the ordinary person and pointing out their implications for the larger society.
Known as the Ghana Supreme Court Review, the compendium of landmark judgements of the apex court of the land is the first of its kind in the country, and was put together by faculty members of the country’s premier school of law and other faculties.
The UGSoL has also compiled various laws bordering on administrative issues in the country, titled “The Administrative Law in Ghana: Principles, practice and comparative perspectives”.
At a high-profile and well patronised event at the UGSoL to launch the two publications yesterday, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, stressed the need for the country to invest in producing such authoritative works that examined the laws, institutions, constitutional development and the challenges confronting the country.
That, she said, would ensure that legal education and scholarships meaningfully addressed the Ghanaian experience.
Prof. Amfo stressed that the call was not an argument for intellectual isolation, but ensuring that scholarships offered to Ghanaians contributed confidently to national, African and global conversations.
The “The Administrative Law in Ghana: Principles, practice and comparative perspectives,” is an 800-page book with 23 chapters put together with support from 14 contributors from the UGSoL, the Pentecost University and KAAF University law schools and faculties.
The “Ghana Supreme Court Review” is a much more voluminous publication, about four times the volume of the other book, which provides context, explanation and legal basis for the decisions of the Supreme Court.
The event was attended by the Chief Justice, Justice Paul Baffor-Bonnie, other justices of the Supreme Court, Deans of law schools, students and other guests.
“This is one of the important contributions that universities can lead to the development of the law. I am, therefore, delighted that the school of law has established the Ghana Supreme Court Review as a dedicated platform for critical engagement with the Jurisprudence of our apex court,” the Vice-Chancellor said.
Prof. Amfo pointed out that for many years, African universities had relied extensively on scholarly materials from elsewhere, saying “I am particularly pleased about today's events because it speaks to something I consider fundamental to the mission of a university.
“Our responsibility is not merely to transmit knowledge but to produce knowledge, interrogate established ideas and contribute to the development of our society,” she stated.
Prof. Amfo said universities must be places where difficult questions were asked, assumptions challenged, and new perspectives developed, while the knowledge it produced must not remain confined to its lecture halls, academic journals and conference rooms.
She said those efforts must find their way into public policy, professional practice, institutional development and “the lives of the people we serve.”
“The Ghana Supreme Court review and the UGSoL book series are two new additions to our scholarly publications but they signify more than scholarly output,” Prof. Amfo said.
She was hopeful that it would become a respected forum in which scholars, judges, practitioners, and students could examine judicial reasoning, debate legal principles and contribute constructively to the development of Ghana’s jurisprudence.
For his part, Justice Baffoe-Bonnie, who is an alumnus of the UGSoL, commended the Dean of the Faculty, the editorial team, the authors and all those whose intellectual labour brought the publications into being.
He said it was a remarkable thing to produce a book but a greater thing to produce one that filled a avoid.
The Chief Justice said the publications addressed different, but related questions about law in the country which was the work of the highest court of the land and the development of its jurisprudence.
The second, he added, concerned the exercise of public power and its consequences for the ordinary citizen.
“Both are concerned ultimately with the place of law in the exercise of authority and the responsibility of our effusions to remain accountable,” Justice Baffoe-Bonnie added.
Explaining further, he said the Supreme Court was the final judicial authority of the republic, and that its judgement settled disputes, determined rights, interpreted the Constitution, and “gave direction to the development of our law,” adding that though the decisions of the courts may conclude litigation, they did not and ought not conclude thoughts.
A judgement, Justice Baffoe-Bonnie said, might bind the parties and the courts below, yet remained open to scholarly examination, and that its reasoning might be tested, its assumption questioned, and the consequences reconsidered.
Such examination, he indicated, did not diminish the authority of the courts.
“I, therefore, encourage contributors to this review to uphold judgement with scholarly labour, praise where praise is deserved, criticise where criticism is warranted,” Justice Baffoe-Bonnie stressed.
The Dean of UGSoL, Prof. Peter Atudiwe Atupare, for his part, said a nation that could not write its own law books would forever “borrow its own ideas back from audits and pay interest on the loan.”
“Our vision is that Ghana should lend not only borrow.
We dream of a day when students in Nairobi, a judge in Lusaka, among others, reach for a book from Legon to understand how an African constitutional democracy disciplines power,” he said.
Prof. Atupare said the vision of the UGSoL was a Ghanaian legal scholarship that reasoned from the 1992 Constitution, not merely towards it, but one that spoke in its own voice.
“The first is the Ghana Supreme Court review which speaks for a nation in its hardest hours.
Its judgments shape our elections, our rights, our economy and the very architecture of the state.
A court of such consequence deserves scholarship of equal seriousness,” he stressed.
