Law School expansion long overdue - Short

Former Supreme Court (SC) judge Emile Short has hailed the ruling of the Supreme Court to scrap the examination and interview process before admission of students to the Ghana Law School.

However, he explains that the development brings a challenge which the Ghana Law School must find a way to tackle as soon as possible by expanding facilities and other necessities.

The Supreme Court (SC) ruled on Wednesday June 21 that it was unconstitutional for the General Legal Council to ask applicants to the Ghana Law School to write an entrance examination and subsequently be interviewed prior to admission.

The court said the current mode of admission is in violation of Legislative Instrument 1296.

A United States-based Ghanaian lawyer, Professor Kwaku Asare, initiated the suit in 2015, challenging the mode of admission used by the Ghana School of Law.

Professor Asare argued that the compulsory entrance examination and interview before admission violate Articles ll (7) 297 (d) 23, 296 (a) (b) and 18 (2) of the 1992 Constitution.

The justices, in delivering their judgment, noted that their order on cancelling the entrance examination and subsequent interview should be implemented in six months when admissions for the 2018 academic year begins.

The first chair of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) told Valentina Ofori Afriyie on Class FM’s 505: “The Supreme Court has held and quite rightly so that the requirement of an exam and interview [are] not required under the regulation and, therefore, it is unconstitutional.

However, he noted that it would be challenging for the law school to expand its facilities within the shortest possible time to accommodate more students.

“The problem is whether the Ghana Legal Council (GLC) is going to be able to put in place the facilities and infrastructure necessary to accommodate the huge number of students who qualify under the present regulation,” he explained.

He added: “The GLC will have to find ways of expanding the facilities, for example creating other law schools in Kumasi, Takoradi, and so on to be able to accommodate the students who qualify.”

For him, it has been long overdue to have more facilities, adding that it “is something that they should have done long ago and it has waited until now that the SC has cleared that it is unconstitutional”.