Gov't To Appoint 3 New Supreme Court Judges?

....Justice Georgina Wood, Justice Afreh, Justice Brobbey

By the time the Attorney General's appeal for a review of the case in which he lost to Tsatsu Tsikata comes for hearing in the Supreme Court, one, two, or all three of the judges named above would be promoted to the Supreme Court.

That is one of the immediate fall outs of the 5-4 decision declaring the Fast Track Courts (FTC) as unconstitutional.

Article 113(2) of the same constitution stipulates that a review before the Supreme Court must be heard by the full court, in other words, a bigger panel than that which took the original decision.

The line-up which took the original decision was nine because the tenth member of the court, Justice Lamptey was out of the country at the time. Since odd numbers normally sit on cases at the Supreme Court, not even Justice Lamptey's presence would satisfy that requirement, which means another judge or judges would have to be appointed to make up the odd number 11 or 13 or even 15.

At the time of going to press yesterday, highly placed sources within the judiciary and government confirmed to The Accra Daily Mail that plans were indeed afoot to satisfy the constitutional requirements ASAP to empanel a bigger court to hear the AG's application for review of the 5-4 decision of last week.

It would appear therefore that Tsatsu's victory has inadvertently fast-tracked the appointment of new Supreme Court Judges, something which according to the same sources, the president had intended to do sometime this year.

Three very eminent judges had been penciled in by the president for some time now. They include Mr. Justice Brobbey, the jurist who was tasked to midwife the Fast Track Courts into being as well as nursing them into maturity, Mrs. Justice Georgina Wood, who had as far back as 1999 been recommended for appointment on the Supreme Court, and the gentle jurist, Justice Afreh, who himself had been sitting on cases at the FTC before it was declared unconstitutional.

The Accra Daily Mail could not immediately get confirmation whether the announcement would be made before or after the president's return from CHOGM currently taking place in Australia.