Abuse Of Judicial Power Through Contempt of Court.

By: Dr. Agyenim Boateng

In my opinion, the fundamental issues or principles involved in the so-called recent contempt of court trial were sidestepped or ignored by some of the so called legal and political pundits. The issue of freedom of the press and freedom of speech, though stuck out like a sore thumb, yet some of the much tooted ' legal gurus' including law lecturers and political commentators described the 'Kangaroo trial' as fair. Quiet disingenuous!
They embraced the capricious and arbitrary sentencing as appropriate, as even some felt the unjust verdict as teaching tool for the culprits, in this case, the victims and future transgressors who may challenge the Justices on efforts to silence or chill the fundamental rights of citizens on use of their free speech under the constitution. What a misuse of judicial powers!
To my chagrin, even the National Media Commission(NMC) and the Ghana Bar Association(GBA) joined the chorus of approval of the misconduct of the Supreme Court Judges in silencing free speech contrary to the statutory laws that repealed criminal libel under Kufuor administration. Evidently , the summary trial and sentencing of the journalist, Ken Kuranchie and other citizens were just a back door effort to resuscitate the moribund criminal libel laws. Sad to say the NMC and GBA found the sentence as fair instead of mounting a vigorous defense of free speech and constitutionally protected right of editors to pursue their craft unmolested pursuant to Gh Constitution Article 162 (4).
None of the political pundits even the legal elites have come out with any solution on how to prevent such arbitrary misuse of power by the Judges in the future. Everyone knows Parliament has its own laws and guidelines on sanctions under the contempt of Parliament. However our courts do not have any except, see Article 19 (12) , they operate under anachronistic common law concept of contempt that gives the Judge free reign to intimidate, harass and humiliate the contemnor as evidenced in Awuku-Atugiba and Kuranchie trials. Even more humiliating ,as noted by a well known Kumasi lawyer and industrialist in his autobiography, was how a judge in Kumasi High Court punished a senior barrister to do some jumping jack in an open court when he was held in contempt of court by the presiding judge in the 1960’s. What a flagrant abuse of power by a judge . What is needed urgently is Parliament to pass legislation reforming this common law power of contempt by the Judges ; the present undefined law has no place in our democratic constitutional governance. Let me emphasize at the expense of begging the questions that none of the institutions of government or state has absolute power. All powers are circumscribed by the constitution and the statutory laws and each has to operate within such limitations. Thus, Justice Atuguba’s rhetoric that the law is in the bosom of the justices of the Supreme Court is whole fully misplaced
I suggested elsewhere recently about the minds set of the judiciary and the legal elites still being mired under the common law theory of jurisprudence instead of accepting principles of under constitutionalism as the bedrock of our democracy. The judges reluctance to accept changes and even adopt modern technology (I.T.) as part of the court room accessory is symptomatic of what ails the judiciary thereby prolonging and delaying the administration of justice. Why did the Supreme Court Justices reject the use of DVD and software to facilitate the tendering of evidence in the Petition trial?

Old habits are hard to change that's why I call on revamping the law school's curriculum to inculcate into our future lawyers and jurists modern trends in constitutional jurisprudence and the utility of IT as integral part of the reformed court systems. This will be a way forward for administration of JUSTICE in Ghana.

Editor's Note:

Dr. Agyenim Boateng
Former Asst, Deputy Attorney-General, Kentucky, USA
EMAIL> [email protected]