Promising cleanliness, plastering chaos: Time to clean up the walls, Mr President

The season is upon us — that time of the year when battle-weary lawyers eking out a living from practising at the superior courts get a deserved break — I mean the annual legal vacation. Accordingly, yours truly is ensconced in a leafy suburb, the location of which shall not be disclosed for security reasons!

Whilst we rest our battered legs and limbs, it is opportune to reflect on some aspects of the legal regime which, in my humble opinion, need some reforms.

It is this that focuses the mind on a topic that has become very vexed in recent weeks — the correct number of Justices for the Supreme Court.

In a letter addressed to the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, justified the reasons why the number of Justices adjudicating cases at the apex court needs to be increased from the current 15 to 20.

By and large, the motivation for that request was to help the Supreme Court deal with the increasing workload that the court is labouring under.

The increase, her Ladyship contended, would ensure more effective and speedier hearings, higher quality decision-making as well as reducing the pressure on the Justices of the Court.

Workload

It is a fact, far beyond argument, that the workload of the Justices of the Supreme Court is very punishing. As a result, this unfortunate situation has occasioned delays in the administration of justice.

It takes an inordinate length of time after filing a matter at the court to get a hearing.

We are all aware of the often repeated but very true phrase, ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. Whilst there are a lot of reasons why justice should not be delayed, this piece will not go into them for obvious reasons — constraints of time and space.

Also, our focus in this write-up is not centred on the merits or demerits of the proposition by her the Chief Justice — it has garnered enough brouhaha with some calling for brimstone and fire to
rain on us — we have had enough of that.

The purpose of this article is to proffer some solutions that go to the heart of the problem — unreasonably high workload of the Justices of the apex court.

One of the solutions that has been bandied about is the reduction of the extent of the jurisdiction of the court.

Overhaul

What I advocate is an overhaul of the whole appeal process. There are too many appeals that are overwhelming the Supreme Court because of the constitutional provision of appeals as of right.

What this means is that every aggrieved litigant has a constitutional right of appeal.

The net effect of this seemingly ‘democratic’ right is that it engenders and generates a lot of unmeritorious appeals clogging up the system.

In every case that litigants lose, no matter how preposterous and unworthy their case, they are given the right to appeal, thereby adding to the pile of cases on appeal.

I propose that we critically look at this and adopt what obtains in other jurisdictions, with particular reference to England.

We should adopt a two-pronged approach to dealing with appeals: limiting the right of appeal only to cases which have meritorious grounds of appeal and the insistence of strict time limits for appeal.

In England, litigants need leave from the court to appeal superior court decisions.

For example, if you want to appeal in a criminal case, say from the Crown Court to the Court of Appeal, you will have to seek leave of the Court of Appeal beforehand.

You will first have to appear before a single judge of the Court of Appeal to advance argument(s) as to why you should be allowed to appeal.

If you fail, you have a chance to repeat the application before three (3) Justices of Appeal. If the application fails again, you may need to pay costs and, in some cases, may be given a loss of time order – spending longer time in custody and time added to the sentence.

The system purges all unmeritorious appeals and substantially cuts out all baseless appeals which might otherwise have clogged up the system. It is about time to review the ‘appeal as of right phenomenon’.

In addition, if strict times limits were imposed within which litigants had leave to appeal then it is likely that only the most worthy cases with credible grounds would be filed.

The writer is a lawyer.
E-mail: georgebshaw1@gmail.com