The chair of the Constitution Review cautions against making hasty Supreme Court modifications
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The chairman of the Constitution Review Committee has cautioned against making hasty changes to Ghana’s legal system without solid evidence to support them, especially when it comes to plans that may impact the Supreme Court.
Speaking on Joy News, Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh emphasised that any effort to change the appellate structure must be based on facts rather than conjecture.
Reforms without statistics, he claimed, would be a risk to the legal system.
“You made a very important point about cases getting overturned, and in fact, this is where statistics is important,” he remarked.
He asserts that the nation must first develop trustworthy statistics regarding the frequency with which cases between the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court are overturned.
He stated, “I would actually hope that we would get to a point where we have data to show the rate of overturned between the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court,” characterising such data as “an important statistic we must have before we make a full move on that one.”
Prof. Prempeh clarified that the data would play a major role in determining the course of reform.
“Because if the statistics show that that case is 90% of the cases are overturned, then we are in trouble, On the other hand, if they show that 90% are affirmed, then that layer is just delaying,” he reiterated.
He stated that in order to direct the reform process, the courts must rely on their own records.
He stated, “I hope that the courts have the records and that at the appropriate stage in the process we can look at those records and say, look, the rate of overturn is so high that that layer is still necessary.”
Prof. Prempeh believes that this choice should not be made hastily.
Thus, he stated, “So it’s not one of those decisions I think that we should make easily.”
He did concede, though, that worries about the court system’s delays were valid.
“The idea was that cases were backing up. Too many cases are ageing in the system. Justice deleted. Justice denied,” he said.
Long-term litigation hurts regular people, he continued.
“It’s not fair to the litigants for cases to be there for 10 or 20 years,” he stated.
He claims that one of the main reasons for delays was highlighted by stakeholders as jurisdictional obstacles.
He clarified, “What is slowing down the process? And they said, well, jurisdiction is one of them. Everything goes up to the Supreme Court.”
He claimed that this worry prompted suggestions to control the workload of the Supreme Court.
“So it’s okay, then let’s, let’s put in some of these reforms to make sure that we can at least control the volume of the load that’s going there,” he stated.
Prof. Prempeh made it apparent that the committee’s recommendations weren’t isolated.
“These are things that we came to these decisions from real engagement with the judge,” he stated.
He said that the committee conducted in-depth discussions with members of the judiciary.
“We met the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the district court, the circuit court, and we had a dialogue with them around these issues,” he stated.
Prof. Prempeh points out that without data, changes to the Supreme Court run the risk of inflicting more harm than good. Despite the need to move, he maintained that reform must be intentional, evidence-based, and carefully planned.
Source: newsthemegh.com
