Prof. Asare applauds Atuguba for exposé on Supreme Court Judges

Law Professor, Stephen Kwaku Asare, has praised his colleague law Professor, Raymond Atuguba for his research and findings which sought to create a link between voting trends by judges of the Supreme Court and the political party that appointed them into office.

Presenting his findings at the 2018 Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) Law Conference in Accra on Thursday, 15 February 2018, Prof Atuguba explained that the research was based on hundred political cases in Ghana adding "it is not a coincidence".

“Judges were voting less according to who appointed them at the beginning of the Fourth republic in 1993. A number of reasons accounted for that. First, we had a new constitution and some of the cases were very clear. So a lot of them will give unanimous judgments, so whether you were appointed by an NDC government or NPP government, you joined the unanimous decision in saying that this provision of this law is contrary to the constitution. Then in the middle, somehow the Supreme Court lost its way after the first years and the judgments started becoming clearly on the lines of party appointments," he explained.

He continued: "Overall, the data reveals that 14 out of 22 NDC (National Democratic Congress) appointees, making up 64 percent of the party’s appointees to the Supreme Court have given judgments in favour of the NDC. The NPP (New Patriotic Party) was more successful with 13 of their 16 judges giving a majority judgment in their favour, so 81 percent consistency".

However, the presentation and findings of the research has not gone done well with some Justices of the Supreme Court as well as Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo.

Commenting on the development, Prof Asare noted in a Facebook post on Friday, 16 February 2018 that: "It is unfortunate that the Chief Justice attacked the Professor for simply letting the data talk. I strongly and emphatically disagree with the CJ that doing research, like what Atuguba has done, is analogous to ‘comparing foreign judicial systems to Ghana’s’".



He continued: “Unlike the Chief Justice, who cautioned the learned professor to ‘be careful about what he is importing into our environment, they are used to that, we are not,’ I urge him to persist with his research and publish the fascinating findings.

“We cannot talk about quality in legal education if we put restrictions on the research of legal academics. We must start getting used to research, if indeed the claim that we are not already used to it is meritorious”.