Black’s Law Dictionary doesn’t bind the people of Ghana – Tsatsu Tsikata tells Judges

Tsatsu Tsikata, has argued that judges basing their judgement on the Black’s Law Dictionary, which is an English Law textbook has a different effect from what is in the Ghanaian statutes.

“…frankly speaking what is in the English Law dictionary is different from what is in the statute. Even if the judges still insist that what is in that English Law textbook is what they are applying, we will still respectfully say that we think they are wrong. It doesn’t make us arrogant,” Tsikata told KSM on the KSM show monitored by GhanaWeb.

He explained further that the evolution of the law shows that sometimes decisions that were once thought to be right are later on changed and thought to be wrong.

“I am convinced that in time some of the decisions which I am suggesting humbly are not right that was made by the judges about the interrogatories and so on. They are decisions which will not ultimately stand the test of time. That’s my conviction,” Tsatsu Tsikata said.

He observed: “they won’t stand the test of time because when you look at the framework of the constitution that we have, and the way in which that framework seeks to make public officials accountable, it is difficult to square that constitutional framework with decisions which just put a shield, a cordon around public officials and does not enable them to step forward to give an account of what they’ve done. So, I think that the whole constitutional framework that we have seeks to enhance the accountability of public officials.”

Tsikata indicated that that is an underlying principle and therefore if your decisions do not advance that, in the long run, it will be seen as an aberration.

He noted that bringing the definitions of the Black’s Law Dictionary into a ruling cannot be forgotten “because the terms of the Evidence Act are very clear in the opportunity that they give us as Petitioner an opportunity to call the Electoral Commission Chairperson to give evidence, it’s very clear.

“What the judges were using from Black’s Law Dictionary was a procedure in the English Common Law context which is quite different and our Evidence Act is also different…Respectfully, I will just say, that Black’s Law Dictionary doesn’t bind the people of Ghana. What binds the people of Ghana is the Evidence Act,” Tsatsu Tsikata stressed.