A long-simmering dispute over Ghana’s judicial legal vacation has escalated into a constitutional challenge, after Ofoase-Ayirebi MP Kojo Oppong Nkrumah filed a Supreme Court suit against Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, arguing that administrative warrants directing selected judges to hear criminal trials during the break amount to unconstitutional “selective justice.”
The writ, filed on 14 August, names Baffoe-Bonnie as first defendant and Attorney-General Dominic Ayine as second defendant. Oppong Nkrumah, a lawyer and former minister, is invoking the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction under Articles 2(1) and 130(1) of the Constitution, asking the court to nullify warrants that prioritise “special criminal cases” during the vacation, which runs from 1 August to 30 September, while other pending matters remain untouched. He argues this breaches the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law under Article 17, and separately contends that compelling lawyers and judicial staff to work during the break violates their rights to health and fair working conditions under Articles 24 and 36. He has stressed the suit does not dispute the Chief Justice’s general authority to administer the courts, only the limits on how that power is exercised.
The lawsuit follows weeks of friction between the bench and the bar. The Ghana Bar Association wrote to the Chief Justice on 10 August, citing petitions from several law firms objecting to being compelled to appear during the vacation, and argued that cases should not proceed once counsel has indicated unavailability. Baffoe-Bonnie pushed back publicly, telling the Senior Staff Association of the Judicial Service that lawyers cannot refuse to appear simply because they made personal plans, and that adjournments remain a judicial rather than administrative decision.
The controversy has also drawn in political and legal commentators. Political scientist Ransford Gyampo argued the current system still carries “relics of colonialism,” tracing the vacation’s origins to an era when judges needed time to sail back to Britain, and said government cannot allow “an arm of government to grind to a halt” for three months each year; he has proposed a roster system, similar to what operates elsewhere in the public service, that would let some judges take leave while others keep courts running. Lawyer Kwame Bentil said he backs lawyers who have refused to attend court during the break, arguing the legal profession needs to revisit how the vacation is structured. Lawyer Martin Kpebu, meanwhile, suggested the GBA’s concerns about judges honouring vacation conventions were better directed at the Association of Magistrates and Judges than at the Chief Justice directly.
The Chief Justice and Attorney-General have 14 days from being served to file their statements of defence in the Supreme Court case.
