Sanction lawyers who use social media to scandalize courts – AG to Chief Justice

AG addresses 22 Bench, bar and faculty conference

Godfred Dame accuses opposition lawyers of seeking to poison public

AG bemoans attacks on judiciary

Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Godfred Yeboah Dame, has called for sanctions to be brought against lawyers who use social media as a medium to scandalize the judiciary.

According to

Read full articlethe Attorney General, persons including lawyers from the opposition divide of the political space have made it a point to pass vicious commentaries against the judiciary especially when the courts deliver judgements that do not go in their favour.

“My Lord Chief Justice, one would have thought that lawyers would have taken advantage of the digital revolution, which I have spoken about this morning, to consolidate the importance of this legal profession and its role in the affairs of the state.

“On the contrary, recent developments disclose systematic attempts by certain lawyers, often belonging to a side of the political divide to deploy social media to denigrate the administration of justice through poisoning and caustic attacks on judgements of the courts, albeit unjustified. This is often worsened in commentary on so-called political cases where some lawyers perceive the outcome to have far-reaching consequences for the objectives of political parties they sympathize with,” he stated while addressing the 2022 Bench, bar and faculty conference held in Accra on Thursday, April 21.

He emphasized that such lawyers when faced with rulings that disfavour them or their interest “go to the rather farcical extent of actually advocating for the abolishing or scrapping our courts.

“The most deplorable thing about such endeavour is that many times their vicious comments are plainly wrong yet the propagators of these wrong and dangerous ideas do not relent in their efforts to push them down the throat of the unsuspecting public,” the AG added.

Tagging the actions of such lawyers as an inducement for members of the public to also attack the judiciary, Godfred Yeboah Dame asked that the courts take action to punish such lawyers to serve as a deterrent.

“Such disreputable practice on the part of some lawyers further becomes an inducement to persons who are not members of the legal profession to launch even more savage and illogical attacks on the judiciary.

“This conduct is clearly despicable as it has the ultimate tendency to destroy the integrity of institutions of justice delivery in Ghana. Such conducts should result in sanctions inflicted on lawyers in question,” he stated.