
Godfred Yeboah Dame, Attorney General & Minister of Justice
The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Godfred Dame, has complained about the tendency of some lawyers, who belong to political parties, to resort to social media to deliberately bring the image of the judiciary into disrepute.
He has therefore proposed a live telecast of all court cases of national importance, apart from election petitions, so that the public can follow the proceedings of such cases, and make informed judgments.
Mr Dame made call yesterday when he addressed the “Open of the Bench, Bar and Faculty Conference”.
He observed that some of lawyers embark the action of deliberately denigrating the courts when their parties lose cases in the courts. He insisted that such acts have the ultimate tendency to destroy the integrity of the justice delivery institutions in the country.
“My Lord Chief Justice, one would have thought that lawyers would have taken advantage of the blessings of the digital evolution, which I have spoken about this morning, to consolidate the importance of the legal profession and its central role in the affairs of state…
“On the contrary, recent developments disclose a systematic attempt by certain lawyers, often belonging to a side of the political divide, to deploy social media to denigrate the administration of justice through poisoned and caustic attacks on judgments of the courts, albeit unjustified,” he said.
Consequences
According to him, this is often witnessed in commentary on so-called political cases, “where some lawyers perceive the outcome to have a far-reaching consequence for the objectives of political parties they sympathise with”.
Citing the case of Akoto and Tuffour v Attorney-General, Mr Dame said even though some lawyers were quick to jump on social media to “propagate what sometimes is falsely portrayed as academic critique, they are loath to engage in a real scholarly examination of judgments of the Superior Courts.”
He therefore stressed that his recommendation for live telecast of cases of national importance is to assist in curbing the “unacceptable practices in the legal fraternity”.
According to him, the move will also enable the citizenry to decipher the arguments presented by legal practitioners and why adjudicators make certain judgments.
“Reflecting on these unhealthy developments I have spoken about, My Lord Chief Justice, sometimes, I really think the way to go is to permit more broadcasts of cases of immense national importance and not the election petition alone.
“When this is done, the poverty of legal reasoning behind certain cases dismissed by the Supreme Court and in respect of which the state emerges, the victor will be exposed for all to see,” he maintained.
Desist
The Attorney General urged lawyers to desist from such conduct and rather focus on ways they can help better the justice delivery system in the country.
“Faced with adverse rulings, some lawyers go to the rather farcical extent of actually advocating for the abolition or scrapping of our courts. The most deplorable thing about such endeavour is that many a time, 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 throats of the unsuspecting public.
“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 justice delivery institutions in Ghana,” he cautioned.