Supreme Court Justice Nominee Mr Emmanuel Yoni Kulendi says Ghana’s legal education system needs a complete restructuring to mitigate the pressure on the only Law School in the country.
Appearing before the vetting committee on Tuesday, Mr. Kulendi explained that the current state of Ghana’s legal education does not match modern standards as it reflects systems that are only applicable some decades back.
“I take the view that legal education needs structural reforms. You have a system that was designed 60 years ago that has not substantially been re-engineered. You are bound to have problem” he noted.
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According to him, “population has increased; the rule of law has come to stay” and as result, the “appetite for studying the law” has become “inevitable”. He again indicated that hitherto, the University of Ghana was the only institution in Ghana offering legal education in the country but in recent years there have been an upsurge in the numbers of institutions offering legal education. This he believes calls for the urgent need to expand infrastructure to meet the growing demands.
“Now you have most of the universities in Ghana with faculties of law and yet you have maintained the same Makola. You don’t need a prophet to tell you that there will be a stampede at the door. Wherever there is a stampede, there will be casualties, that is why we are having academic casualties in that journey” he explained
Mr. Kulendi suggested that the reforms should however be done in an informed and well thought through manner that will not later drop the quality of legal education adding that
“The reform must take into account the population increase, the appetite for the law and importantly, should be brought in sync with the changes that are going on in other universities” he said
Late last year, some Law students led a demonstration calling for reforms in legal education in Ghana. The demonstrators claimed there was a deliberate attempt by the General Legal Council (GLC) to unfairly and unjustifiably restrict the number of applicants who qualify to undergo professional legal education in the country. But the then Chief Justice, Justice Sophia Akufo dismissed the claims maintaining her position that any drastic change will lower standards in the legal profession.
The Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Prof. Philip Ebow Bondzi-Simpson has also been at the fore front calling for reforms in legal education in the country. He has maintained that the legal profession in Ghana was in dire need of human resource hence the need to restructure to ensure more people have access to legal education without difficulty.
Source: Kojo Dei/ATL FM NEWS
