Chief Justice to face Appointments Committee June 19

The Chief Justice nominee Justice Sophia Akuffo will face an expanded Appointments Committee of Parliament during her vetting on June 19, 2017.

The 26-member Committee has extended invitations to other select committee chairpersons overseeing constitutional or legal matters to beef up the team.

President Akufo-Addo appointed Justice Akuffo to replace chief justice Georgina Theodora Wood who retired on June 7, 2017.

The Committee is already assessing past judgments of Justice Akuffo and her publications to be better informed about her performance at the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Appointments Committee of Parliament has set Monday, June 19, 2017 as the date it will vet Justice Akuffo, Minority Chief Whip Muntaka Mubarak has disclosed.

“Unless there are some changes, it is going to be 19th and 20th of June. We have decided that we will take CVs, and then five days after we have taken CVs, we begin working. So if we said 19th and 20th and say, for example, the CV of the Chief Justice comes on the 17th, we’ll give ourselves five days.

So if anyone delays CVs, then he or she will be delaying the vetting,” he told Accra-based Citi FM.

President Akufo-Addo last month announced Justice Akuffo as the new Chief Justice of Ghana.

The President who made the announcement Friday May 22, 2017 said he believes the Supreme Court Justice will be fair and independent at her new job, as she has been throughout her career.

Profile

Sophia A.B. Akuffo has been a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ghana for the past two decades.

Sophia Akuffo trained as a lawyer under Nana Akufo-Addo who had her Masters in Law (LLM) from the Havard University in the United States.

She has been a member of the Governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute and the Chairperson of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Task Force.

In January 2006 she was elected one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights initially elected for two years, she was subsequently re-elected until 2014 and is at present serving as Vice-President of the Court.

She has written The Application of Information & Communication Technology in the Judicial Process – the Ghanaian Experience, a presentation to the African Judicial Network Ghana (2002).

One of her famous cases is when she presided over the Montie 3 in 2016.