Stay off NPP, NDC realm in your research work – Professor tells Atuguba

Law Professor, Stephen Kwaku Asare, says Prof. Raymond Atuguba’s research findings should have rather had a linkage with the Judicial Philosophy of Judges instead of the ideological grounds he seeks to premise his work on.

“If I were to be a reviewer of his findings, the only advice I would have given him would be for him to stay off the realm of NPP vrs NDC, and let his research findings be based on Judicial philosophy. If he’ll do it this way, it will rid his work of the unnecessary controversies as we are seeing now.” he told host Fiifi Banson on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa 102.5 FM.

The Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo and several judges have condemned the Legon law professor over his latest research which established that judges at the Supreme Court, in times when the law is gray on a matter, vote on political cases in favor of the government that appointed them.

“It is an American type of research that you have done…that’s fine, but please be careful what you are importing into our environment… They [Americans] are used to that, we are not. I don’t think there was a single judge who agreed with what you were saying,” the Chief Justice said.

Justice Jones Dotse described the research as an “insult of the highest order” to judges.

Commenting on the matter on Kasapa 102.5 FM, Prof. Asare said the hullabaloo about Atuguba’s research findings is unnecessary, insisting which ever way he concludes his findings, it’s a matter of interpretation of the data he worked with.

“I think his interpretation is slightly different from mine, but there is nothing wrong with what he’s saying. He is only interpreting data and he’s entitled to interpret data any way he wants and he believed based on his interpretation that perhaps his findings is more of ideological grounds and in some cases they are not.

“I think it’s more of a philosophical issue rather than party political issue. It’s more of Judicial philosophy. He said when we started the 4th Republic, the Judges Opinions were unanimous. Well, we should also acknowledge that when we started the 4th Republic the Judges were all appointed by the NDC or the PNDC.

They were all carry over from Rawlings’ regime So why were they making unanimous decisions when NPP had not appointed anyone? What was happening was that in some cases, the Judges just agreed no matter whether you’re using a casual approach, purposive approach or a spiritual approach.

The law is so clear, the precedents are so clear and so on that the Judges agree. So there are some cases where no matter your approach, the answer to the cases are very clear. But in other cases, the answer is not very clear, and that is when the Judicial Philosophy really becomes important.”