Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee, Prof Henry Kwasi Prempeh, says cases are ageing in the courts for far too long, leaving litigants trapped in legal battles that last decades.
“It’s not fair to the litigants for cases to be there for 10 or 20 years,” he said, stressing that delays undermine confidence in justice and deny closure to those seeking redress.
At the heart of the problem, Prof Prempeh explained, is a system clogged by too many cases moving up the judicial ladder.
He pointed to jurisdictional issues that push almost everything to the Supreme Court, creating congestion and slowing the entire process.
“Too many cases are ageing in the system,” he said. “Justice delayed. Justice denied.”
He cautioned, however, that reforming the system must be guided by evidence rather than assumptions.
A key concern is how often cases are overturned between the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. According to him, that data is crucial before any drastic restructuring is done.
“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,” he said.
Prof Prempeh warned that the implications of that data are significant.
“If the statistics show that 90% of the cases are overturned, then we are in trouble,” he noted. But if “90% are affirmed, then that layer is just delaying.”
For him, this is not a decision to be rushed. “It’s not one of those decisions I think that we should make easily,” he said, insisting that reforms must respond to real problems backed by real numbers.
He revealed that the committee’s recommendations emerged from extensive consultations across the judiciary.
“These are things that we came to these decisions from real engagement with the judge,” he said.
According to Prof Prempeh, the committee held dialogues with “the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the district court, the circuit court,” allowing judges at every level to share their concerns about delays and workload pressures.
Those engagements, he explained, reinforced the need to control the volume of cases moving upward in the system. The goal is simple. Reduce congestion. Speed up justice. Protect litigants.
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Source: www.myjoyonline.com