Dismissed CJ loses ‘fairness’ challenges

Ghana’s former Chief Justice, Gertrude Torkornoo, dismissed by the country’s President 10 months ago, has just lost two cases testing the fairness of the dismissal process. One of these cases, heard by Ghana’s apex court, involved challenges brought by two petitioners to test whether the process followed in her dismissal was constitutional. The other was heard by the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States. It dealt with whether her rights under the African Charter had been infringed. But, as Carmel Rickard argues in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, the fact that the CJ’s dismissal inquiry was held in camera, as mandated by the Constitution, has a downside: it means there is no full, public record that can be scrutinised for fairness, by independent observers.