A Law lecturer at the Ghana Law School, Moses Foh Amoaning, believes the Supreme Court’s decision barring the General Legal Council (GLC) from asking applicants to the Ghana Law School to undertake examination and interviews before admission, could have serious implications for students.
He explained on Eyewitness News that, the certificates already awarded students upon their completion of study could be deemed as void, per the interpretation of the judgment.
“Those students who have gone through the course now, and those in final year who have just taken their exams, honestly, the certificates that they are going to be awarded will also be null and void because if you compare the subjects that they have to do which is set up in the LI, it is different from what they did.”
This notwithstanding, Mr. Foh Amoaning said the judgement afforded the GLC the opportunity to align its reforms with the law.
“…It [the judgment] is just concerning all that we have been saying that the General Legal Council, in conducting reforms, which includes the expansion of the school, examination interviews because the standards coming from the faculties was not that good, it confirms our view that those reforms were not in sync with the current legislative framework that governs professional legal education.”
The admissions to the Ghana Law School has been a point of contention in recent times, with critics accusing the Ghana Law School of being too rigid, given the status quo which limits intake into the Ghana Law School to under 500 of the about-2000 LLB graduates annually.
Some of this rigidity is brought on by the by the GLC asking applicants to the Ghana Law school to undertake examination and subsequent interview before admission. But according to the court, these requirements are in violation of the Legislative Instrument 1296 which gives direction for the mode of admission.
Mr. Foh Amoaning noted that, all this could have been avoided if the GLC had “aligned to the reforms that were done” from the time where was only one law faculty and a significantly less number of LLB graduates annually.
GLC must work towards new laws
He also emphasized that, all these problems were noticed and indicated “on countless occasions” to the former Chief Justice but nobody listened.
“All that needs to be done is that the General Legal Council has to go back and set out the reforms in a complicit legislation, have stakeholders meeting as we suggested and then… formulate that into proper regulations and let it go to Parliament so that the representatives of the people, who are the parliamentarians, can discuss all of this, and then pass the new law to govern the new framework.”
Among the critical resolutions needed following the judgment, Mr. Foh Amoaning said the Ghana Law School itself must be established by law because the Law School bill is still in parliament.
This would mean that “the law school can be established as a school independent of the General Legal Council with the capacity to regulate professional legal education.”
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
