Members of the Bench and the Bar in Ghana have been urged to uphold the integrity and discipline of their professions so as to ensure a better judicial system for the country.

The Reverend Father Professor George Asare Ankra-Badu, a retired Priest of the Anglican Diocese of Accra, said integrity was the embodiment of moral excellence; honesty, probity and uprightness, explaining that, that all creation depended on integrity to function harmoniously.

He said justice was the authority exercised in the maintenance of the administration of law, which also meant merited rewards or punishment.

Rev Ankra-Badu made the appeal on Saturday at the Cathedral Church of the Most Holy Trinity, in Accra, during a service for the opening of the 57th Legal Year, on the theme “Access to Justice: Integrity in Justice Delivery”.

In attendance were the Lady Chief Justice, Mrs Georgina Theodora Wood, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Justices of the Superior Courts, Circuit Judges, Magistrates and the public.

Rev Ankra-Badu told the judges and lawyers that the annual Legal Year Service was to serve as a reminder to them that they would ensure that the legal system provided an honest, unimpeded and merited reward or punishment to all who would appear before them.

He said the Legal Year Service was an invitation to God to be a stakeholder in the adjudication of justice in Ghana, declaring that, God by His nature would, therefore, protect them as they did their work with integrity.

He said in the past, the antecedents of social disorder and bloody revolutions had been flagrant disregard for justice and righteousness by the ruling classes such as in the French and Russian revolution.

However, Rev Ankra-Badu reminded the judges that they constituted the Third Estate of the Government and were the bastion of freedom and justice who should protect the people from the excesses of the executives and the legislature.

“A nation is only as safe and strong as the character of her citizens,” he, however, stated.

He noted that education without morality created clever devils, while education with morality created responsible citizens.

Rev Ankra-Badu said integrity operated under three laws of life: the Law of Opportunity, the Law of Authority and the Law of Consequences.

“In your daily activities as lawyers and judges, you will have countless opportunities and authority to uphold or pervert justice,” he said. “The consequences of your actions, that is reward or punishment may not be immediate or obvious but there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.”

“Your professional vestments as lawyers and judges are a constant reminder that you should act with integrity.”

He said Ghana's history was replete with cases of God going to the defence of lawyers and judges who had been treated unjustly in their line of duty and dealing with the perpetrators.