Private legal practitioner Thaddeus Sory has urged lawyers who disagree with judicial decisions or administrative directives to use established legal procedures rather than resorting to media campaigns, public pressure or boycotts. He said lawyers dissatisfied with decisions affecting their cases have several avenues within the legal system to seek redress and should exhaust those options before making public allegations of bias or political interference. Mr Sory made the comments amid controversy surrounding the directive by Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie authorizing selected High Court judges to sit during the legal vacation.
Lawyers representing former National Signals Bureau Director-General Kwabena Adu-Boahene and former National Food Buffer Stock Company Chief Executive Officer Hanan Abdul-Wahab have objected to the arrangement and sought to have proceedings involving their clients deferred until October, when the new legal year begins. In an interview on the KSM Show on Monday, August 17, Mr Sory said lawyers who consider a judicial decision unfair have a responsibility to pursue the remedies provided by law. He explained that a lawyer dissatisfied with a decision by a judge could raise the matter before the court, challenge the resulting ruling or pursue an appeal or other appropriate legal proceedings, depending on the circumstances. “The judge is going to write the ruling. You can challenge it,” he said.
Mr Sory also suggested that lawyers who have concerns about an administrative directive from the Chief Justice could engage the Chief Justice directly and present their objections instead of immediately taking the matter into the public domain. “If you are not happy with the Chief Justice’s decision, you can actually go and meet up with the Chief Justice and say, look, as parties, we want to come and discuss this directive,” he said. The lawyer cautioned against prematurely attributing judicial or administrative decisions to political influence without first pursuing available institutional and legal remedies. He said disagreements with decisions of the judiciary should be handled in a manner that protects the integrity of the justice system while allowing affected parties to exercise their rights. “Why don’t we engage the system in the appropriate way?” he asked.
According to Mr Sory, public commentary on sensitive judicial matters could sometimes intensify tensions and encourage public opinion to harden around a dispute before the underlying legal issues have been properly addressed. “Maybe the idea is to just inflame passions to get people to think the way they want them to think,” he said. His comments come at a time when the decision to allow some High Court judges to hear cases during the legal recess has generated debate over the circumstances under which proceedings should continue outside the regular legal year.
While lawyers involved in the affected cases have raised objections, Mr Sory maintained that disputes over the exercise of judicial or administrative authority should ultimately be resolved through the mechanisms provided by the law. He stressed that the availability of legal remedies gives lawyers an opportunity to challenge decisions without relying primarily on public campaigns to influence judicial outcomes.
By: Joyce Owusu
