Parliament approves Justice Gertrude Torkornoo's nomination as Chief Justice

She succeeds Chief Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah, who retired on May 24, 2023, and will become the 15th Chief Justice of Ghana.

DL News
07 Jun, 2023
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Parliament has officially approved the nomination of Justice Gertrude Torkornoo as the Chief Justice following a unanimous endorsement of her nomination by the Appointments Committee. 

Justice Torkornoo was recommended as Chief Justice on April 26th and subsequently vetted by the Appointments Committee of Parliament on May 26, 2023.

She succeeds Chief Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah, who retired on May 24, 2023, and will become the 15th Chief Justice of Ghana. Her appointment also makes her the third female Chief Justice in the country's history, following the groundbreaking tenure of Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, who served from 2007 to 2017, and the appointment of Sophia Akufo who served from 2017 to 2019.

She studied Law & Sociology for her first degree at the University of Ghana and completed the Professional course in law at the Ghana School of Law in 1986. She holds an LLM in Intellectual Property Law from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, USA, and a Postgraduate Diploma (PGD) in International Law and Organizations from the then International Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands.

After law school in 1986, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo did her national service with the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Legal Aid Center in Accra. Her pupillage was with Fugar & Co, where she became an Associate and later, a Director of the firm. In 1989, while an Associate at Fugar & Co, she won an International Bar Association scholarship in Construction Law, which led to her doing a stage with Nabarro Nathanson in London, and specializing in Construction Law. In January 1997, she set up Sozo Law Consult and became the Managing Partner.

After 18 years of law practice, Justice Torkornoo was invited to join the judiciary in 2004 as a Justice of the High Court of Ghana. In October 2012, she was promoted to the Court of Appeal and rose to become a Justice of the Supreme Court, the apex court, in 2019.


She is well known for being one of the Supreme Court judges who presided over the 2020 presidential petition case between John Dramani Mahama and the Electoral Commission and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

She has also made significant contributions to legal knowledge through some of her non-judicial writings including ‘Creating Capital from Culture’; ‘An Uneasy Marriage – the Relationship between interest rate regimes and debt recovery rates in Ghana (2012), ‘Examining the Borrowers and Lenders Act’ (2015), and ‘The Law on Interests’ (2021).

Justice Torkornoo has held several leadership positions in the judiciary. They include the chair of the Editorial Committee of the Association of Magistrates and Judges, chief editor for developing the Judicial Ethics Training Manual, vice-chair of the E-Justice Steering/Oversight Committee, and vice-chair of the Internship and Clerkship Programme for the Judiciary. She is currently the chair of the E-Justice Steering/Oversight Committee. She is also a faculty member of the Judicial Training Institute and a member of the governing Board of the Judicial Training Institute. She is a regular speaker on different platforms addressing issues on law, leadership, and judicial ethics.