CeSGI

  Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings has recently questioned the nationality of the newly-appointed chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC). Her allegation comes on the backdrop of recent intense speculations that the chairperson is a Nigerian by birth. Ms. Charlotte Kesson Smith herself reports that she was born at Nnewi, Nigeria in the Martin...

  I write again on the law on dual citizenship to clarify what I have found out and consider as widespread misunderstanding of or confusion about the nature of dual citizenship. I have recently read, to my utter chagrin, theories about how one has to do something to activate one's citizenship or to pass a test of allegiance as a condition prec...

  Justice William Atuguba, the Presiding Judge of the 2012 presidential election case, is not only clearly biased but he is also openly hostile to the petitioners. That is the opinion I walked away with after observing the court proceedings of June 11 and June 12. I was particularly shocked and angered by Justice Atuguba's open court tirade di...

  June 26, 2013 will go down in history as one of the darkest days of Ghana's constitutional experiment. On that day, Sammy Awuku was summoned before the Supreme Court of Ghana to answer for his out-of-court comments made about the almost 7-months old Presidential Petition. The accused contemnor had reportedly criticized the Justices for being...

  Stephen Kwaku Asare, Professor ▬ Constitutional Jurisprudence at a Crossroad In Asare v. Attorney General , the Supreme Court announced the death of the "plain meaning" approach to judicial interpretation. Writing for a unanimous Court (Justice Kludze filed a concurring opinion), Justice Date-Bah provided the epitaph: "What interpretation is...

  The new game in town is disqualifying Ghanaian nationals from some political offices on grounds that they possess dual citizenship. There is no law in Ghana that disqualifies dual citizens, although there is a law that disqualifies those who owe allegiance to another country. This triggers an obvious question, what is the relationship, if an...

  In this article, I present equal citizenship as a fundamental principle animating the 1992 Constitution. I also argue that the principle is under imminent threat and danger. The purpose of the article is to call for a united and sustained effort to protect the principle and to avoid becoming a society of unequal citizens. I start by defining...

 The Electoral Commissioner (EC) has set aside March 15 to March 29 to compile the Voters' Register for the impending elections in December 2004. According to the EC, the current register will replace the 2000 register, which turned out to be pregnant with errors. In turn, the 2000 register replaced the 1996 register, which replaced the 1992 r...

  The Supreme Court, on June 22, declared that the General Legal Council's (Council) imposition of an entrance examination and interview requirements for the Professional Law Course violates Articles 11(7), 297(d), 23, 296(a), and 296(b) of the 1992 Constitution. The Court also affirmed that LLB degree holders from Council approved universitie...

  Today, I will whine! Galamsey is destroying our country. We seem not to be the least bit interested in whether we do right to each other or not. In fact, some cheer injustice. Under our laws, you are qualified to study professional law. You have been qualified since 2012. Some since 2013, 2014, 2015 or as recent as 2016. You are not asking f...

Dear His Excellency: Greetings. I write to you this first day of December to urge you to set up a Commission of Inquiry to explore the future of legal education in this country. To the best of my knowledge, the last time such a commission was set up was in 1958. While the country and the legal landscape have changed dramatically, the structures set...

  In light of recent developments, in the vetting of Mr. Martin Amidu for the position of Special Prosecutor, I am renewing my call for the Constitution to be amended to change the retirement age of public servants to 70 years. In the hope, that Parliament will, this time, consider my proposal, I am setting this article in a form that can be a...

It is inescapable that the unruly GLC has failed! It is clear that the School of Law, as we have come to know it, has outlived its usefulness! It is against the law for IEB to be administering exams! It is outrageous that only 20% of law graduates, selected after illegal exams and interviews, are good enough to be called to the Bar! It is unconscio...

Open Letter to all on the Eve of Deciding the Fate of Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) Regulations, 2018 Dear Honourable MPs: Tomorrow, Friday, March 2, 2018, you will be invited to deliberate on the Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) Regulations, 2018. The question you will be deciding is whether to al...

I normally would not be commenting extensively on or about any individually authored policy analysis article or column posted on any of our Ghanaian media websites, unless it was laudably clear that the author of the concerned article or column clearly appeared to be fully knowledgeable or appreciative of what s/he was talking about. For the most p...

The Supreme Court's conviction and imposition of a four-month custodial sentence and a fine of GH¢ 10,000 each on the Montie trio, and another GH¢ 30,000 fine on the directors of Montie FM has generated heated debate in Ghana over the past few days. The debate, although touches on many aspects of this landmark case, is narrowly focused on whether P...

I passed my Common Entrance in 1980 and I went for my prospectus at Saint John's School, Sekondi in the Western Region of Ghana, it all came to a total of present-day Ghc 1.80p, but that brought a great deal of dislocation at home, by way of financial encumbrances, because I had a single-mother with three younger siblings of school-going age. My pr...

I was listening to BBC at dawn of Monday, 13th October, 2014, when a news item chronicling the exploits of the son of Equatorial Guinea's president. The story was about amount of properties he has acquired in America with stolen cash from his nation. The properties included a $30m dollar mansion at Malibu-California, $500,000 Ferrari and over $2m e...

1.0Preamble Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Daniel 6:8 Dear Mrs. Charlotte Ama Osei, 2.0Introduction I am Derick Oppong-Agyare, a citizen of Ghana. I have, like you, also suffered the throes of a job loss and share in your pain. I al...

He is a young intrepid legal practitioner whose appointment to the position of a Deputy Chief of Staff, initially, sparked a storm of debate on social media, by some people within the NPP. That storm, which was in a 'tea-cup', anyway, was probably a genuine expressing of concern, but unfortunately by people who do not know Samuel at a close range. ...