Renowned legal practitioner and Professor of Accounting at a US-based university, Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare, has called for the scrapping of legal vacations in the country.
The 2023/2024 legal year in Ghana came to an end on July 31. The 2024/2025 legal year will however start in early October.
The vacation, which has been a tradition in the legal profession in many countries for centuries, is to allow lawyers, judges and judicial staff to take some rest.
But for Prof. Asare who is also known as Kwaku Azar, the tradition is achaic. According to him, continuing the practice is an indication that the judiciary in Ghana is stucked in 19th century era.
The CDD-Ghana fellow could not fathom why there should be a legal break when huge volume of backlog cases await to be tackled.
“Legal vacations were to allow obroni to travel home to get one month rest at a time in the 19th century when they run the courts. Add the time to travel by ship and you get the 3 months break.
“To continue with this practice, while asking that we have 20 SC Justices to deal with case backlog, is a sign that we are stuck in the 19th century mode of thinking.
“The obroni may be gone but his legacies endure.
“Sorry my learned friends, GOGO will scrap legal vacations on Day 1,” Prof. Asare wrote in a Facebook post sighted by AwakeNewsroom.