The Dean of Law School of the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Professor Ernest Kofi Abotsi, says removing the Chief Justice and other Justices from the General Legal Council (GLC) will end the challenges with legal education.
“I can tell you, the proposed removal of Kwesi Anin-Yeboah from the GLC may not necessarily stop the problem as some people have questioned why judges and others must be on the GLC,” he said on JoyNews Newsfile, Saturday.
Professor Abotsi argued that Deans of Law Schools, the Ghana Bar Association and other relevant stakeholders should take a more prominent role in legal education.
In the 2021 entrance exams to the Ghana Law School, only 790 candidates out of the 2,820 who sat the exams were deemed to have satisfied the pass mark required to guarantee their admission to the only legal profession training institute in Ghana – the Ghana School of Law.
The 499 students contend that the pass mark for the entrance exams has always been 50% in both sections of the exams.
But, for this year’s exams, and unknown to the candidates before they took the exams, the rule has been changed to students getting at least 50% in both sections.
There is growing opposition to parts of a private members bill to reform legal education set to be introduced by two NDC MPs, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor and Francis-Xavier Sosu.
The two MPs are proposing the removal of the Chief Justice and other Supreme Court Justices from the Council for their inability to improve admissions to the Ghana School of Law.
The legislators believe removing them will form part of a grand agenda to improve access to legal education.https://04c6a6e6707a19140daa8a6c9bcbcdb9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
But Professor Abotsi disagrees.
“We haven’t done the concerted efforts of reform. Deans of law schools, law teachers, the Ghana Bar Association – these three entities, in particular, have not taken an active role, I mean the front seat in legal education reform. But very often, we have been consulted after the fact,” he said.
Meanwhile, a former Deputy Attorney General, Dr Dominic Ayine, has announced plans to introduce another private members bill on legal education reform in Ghana.
He said his bill will be introduced by next week.