Incorporate Code of Conduct for Judges in GSL curriculum - Director of Legal Education
He said that even though most of today's lawyers really aspire to join the bench, there is no course like this at the law school to effectively prepare them for the task.
The Director for Legal Education at the Ghana School of Law (GSL), Barima Yaw Oppong Kodie has made a proposal for the incorporation of the Code of Conduct for Judges into the curriculum of the Ghana School of Law.
He said that even though most of today's lawyers really aspire to join the bench, there is no course like this at the law school to effectively prepare them for the task.
"We note with concern that at the Ghana School of Law, there is a whole course on the conduct of lawyers. Unfortunately, we don't have any subject area on the conduct of judges or ethical rules of judges.
Even though lawyers these days when you talk to them now deem the judiciary as a place most of them aspire to go. It is important that we incorporate the conduct of judges which is contained in the code of ethics in the curricula of the Ghana School of Law and they must not just be for the sake of learning and writing exams."
Speaking at the 2023 Conference of the Association of Judges and Magistrates of Ghana(AMJG), Barima Oppong made some proposals to enhance the financial independence of the Judiciary.
Firstly, he made a suggestion for the setting up of certain units like the stamping of legal documents to generate some commission for the Judiciary.
“I suggest that the judiciary may be able to incorporate some other units for revenue. There should be a unit in the judiciary where the court will refer such documents to be stamped and a commission taken to support judicial activities."
Secondly, he suggested that the Judiciary retains a commission from monies retrieved for the state in Financial loss cases.
Also, the GSL Director bemoaned the 30% Internally Generated Fund (IGF) retention of the Judiciary which he described as inadequate and thus pushed for at least 65%.
Furthermore, Barima Oppong also expressed concern about the lack of infrastructure at the Ghana School of Law and prayed for a similar attention to be given to it by authorities as they construct numerous court buildings across the country.
“We have hardly had any improvement in infrastructure. So when 100 courts are being built, I would have thought that 30 classrooms would be built for the law school as well,” he said.
