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Country reports on judicial corruption
Computerised courts reduce delays in Ghana
Legal system: Common law, adversarial, plural Judges per 100,000 people: 0.91 2 Judge’s salary at start of career: US $5,290 Supreme Court judge’s salary: US $8,4883 GNI per capita: US$4504 Annual budget of judiciary: US $17.4 million5 Total annual budget: US $3.2 billion6 Percentage of annual budget: 0.5 Are all court decisions open to appeal up to the highest level? Yes Institution in charge of disciplinary and administrative oversight: Not independent Are all rulings publicised? No Code of conduct for judges: Yes 1 World Bank (2000) 2 Judicial Service of Ghana (2006) 3 Ibid. 4 World Bank Development Indicators (2005) 5 Judicial Service of Ghana 6 CIA World Factbook (2005)
It is common in Ghana to hear litigants, lawyers and court users complain of the pervasiveness of corruption in the judicial system and the media are full of allegations about it. Chief Justice Kingsley Acquah acknowledges the problem and since his appointment in June 2003 has concentrated on reforming the judicial system. Speaking at the Fourth Chief Justices’ Forum in Accra in November 2005, he accepted that corruption is a national problem and urged that criticism of judges should be seen as a means of correcting their mistakes and keeping corruption in check.1 Ghana’s judicial system is composed of the Supreme Court, which interprets and enforces the constitution, and is also the final appellate court. The court of appeal, the second highest court, has jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters. The high court, which has original jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters, also has exclusive original jurisdiction in the enforcement of human rights.
There are also regional tribunals, originally set up by the military regime (1982–88) to try crimes against the state, which have been incorporated in the conventional system. Finally, there are inferior courts, which include circuit courts, circuit tribunals, district magistrate courts and district tribunals. From the perspective of judicial corruption, the structure of the existing system provides a modicum of accountability: lower court decisions tainted with corruption are likely to be overturned on appeal unless the litigant can afford to bribe his or her way through the appellate system. Another check on corruption is that lower court judges whose decisions are frequently overturned risk loss of promotion. That said, there are documented instances where judges whose decisions are subject to appeal have abused their discretion to stay proceedings in order to deny litigants the opportunity to appeal.2 Previously
1 Chief Justice Kingsley Acquah, 4th Chief Justices’ Forum (CJF) in Accra, 22 November 2005, quoted in Ghana Review (Ghana), 23 November 2005. Available at ghanareview.com/review/index.php?class all&date 2005-1123&id 12472 2 A judge was reportedly bribed to issue a restraining order against a person seeking to establish a complaint against the Christ Apostolic Church. The judge reportedly refused to sign her own judgement in order to frustrate the litigants from appealing her decision. Ghanaian Chronicle (Ghana), 21 June 2000.