Retiring Rutgers law professor to take seat on Ghana's Supreme Court

TRENTON, N.J. -- A Rutgers-Camden School of Law professor will soon return home to Ghana and take a seat on the country's top court, more than 20 years after he was pressured to leave because of his activism.

A. Kodzo Paaku Kludze, 68, of Pennsauken, was visiting his homeland this summer when government officials asked him if he would be interested in serving on the Supreme Court. However, no further discussions were held and Kludze returned to the United States, where he has lived since 1977.

Kludze, a father of seven, had planned to move to Ghana next year after he retired from his teaching post. However, he did not learn of his court appointment until after it had been announced in the Ghanaian press and friends began calling to congratulate him.

He then received calls from the country's attorney general and its chief justice, asking him how soon he could return.

"I never thought I would be a judge. I just looked at myself as an academic," Kludze told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Tuesday's editions. He plans to return to Ghana within the next few weeks and is expected to receive formal approval from Ghana's Parliament early next year.

His return will conclude a decades-long effort to help Ghana become a true democracy. A former student leader who opposed the military regime, Kludze took his final university exams from a political detention camp and then became a lawyer.

"(Serving on the court) is a very heavy responsibility," Kludze said. "In an infant democracy, (a judge) is one of those people who will uphold the constitution and protect the rights of the citizens. If the judiciary fails, the whole experiment will collapse again."

Kludze first came under government scrutiny in 1964, he was invited to attend an academic conference outside of Ghana. When he went to get a required travel permit at a government office, police were waiting for him and he was sent to prison for opposing government policies.

In 1977, he argued a case before the country's highest court, challenging the imprisonment of a civilian who had been tried for an economic crime by a military tribunal. Kludze fled the country before the court could rule, taking what he thought was a temporary post as a visiting professor to Temple University's law school in Philadelphia.

Kludze planned to go home in 1979, but became a Rutgers professor after family members told him it was still not safe to return. He became an international authority on African law and wrote several books and articles on the roots of Ghanaian laws and customs.

While admitting that he's nervous about his new job, Kludze said he does not expect to serve long on the court.

"I'll see how it goes, but I want to retire," he said.