Zambian AG’s powers in the spotlight

Zambia’s new Constitutional Court has delivered another bombshell decision, finding that the country’s Attorney-General has no legal standing to bring an application on behalf of more than 60 former Ministers and their deputies. The court had previously ordered them to repay their salaries for the months they were paid when they did not hold office lawfully. As legal writer Carmel Rickard notes in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, the AG built his case around a suggestion that the court had effectively supported slavery and forced labour, by ordering that people not be paid for work they had done.