Law School saga: Ackumey disagrees with SC

The scrapping of entrance examination and interview for applicants to the Ghana Law School is not the best, private legal practitioner Chris Ackumey has said.

“I do believe that scrapping of the entrance examination and the interview will not augur well for the best materials entering the law school,” he told Valentina Ofori-Afriyie on Thursday, June 22.

This was in reaction to a ruling by the Supreme Court (SC) to scrap the examination and interview process before admission of students to the Ghana Law School.

The SC ruled on Thursday June 22 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 violates 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.

However, Mr Ackumey held the view that “we might end up having all sorts of people who might not be of merit or qualify to enter the Law School so, actually, I am against it”.

For him, there must be a way of screening the total number of applicants to fill the limited number of spaces at the Ghana Law School, adding that Prof Asare’s case is “victory without merit”.