GBA VACATES CRIMINAL JUSTICE? GOGO DEMURS!

1. The Ghana Bar Association (GBA), by a letter to the Chief Justice dated 10th August 2026, objects to judges continuing part-heard criminal trials during the legal vacation.
2. Its letter emphasizes lawyers’ vacations, travel plans, availability, closed law firms and “healthy work-life balance.”
3. These are legitimate concerns. But what about the clients?
4. What about the accused person on remand whose trial must wait another two months because his lawyer is on vacation?
5. What about the accused person on bail who has lived for years under the cloud of prosecution and simply wants his case determined?
6. The GBA relies on Order 79 rule 4 of C.I. 47. But C.I. 47 contains the High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules. The warrants in dispute concern criminal trials.
7. To be clear, the law recognizes court vacations. Section 80(2)(g) of the Courts Act, 1993 (Act 459) authorizes rules regulating court sittings and prescribing “the periods of the vacations of the courts.”
8. But the existence of a court vacation does not answer the question before us. That question arises at three levels.
9. First, where is the rule that says a part-heard High Court criminal trial must automatically stop from August 1 to September 30?
10. The contrast with the Court of Appeal Rules, C.I. 19, is instructive. C.I. 19 expressly governs both civil and criminal appeals and expressly prescribes vacations of that Court. C.I. 47, by contrast, expressly governs High Court civil procedure.
11. There is an even more fundamental difficulty with the GBA’s reliance on Order 79 rule 4. The vacation prescribed there is a vacation of the High Court. It is not expressed as a statutory vacation entitlement of members of the Bar.
12. More importantly, rule 4 does not stand alone. It expressly begins: “Subject to rule 1(1).” And rule 1(1) provides that, subject to Act 459, the Chief Justice “may appoint any day including vacations for the hearing of causes or matters as circumstances require.”
13. The GBA cannot have rule 4 without rule 1(1). If it relies on rule 4 to establish a mandatory vacation applicable to these criminal trials, it must also accept rule 4’s express subordination to rule 1(1). It cannot rely on rule 4 for the vacation while ignoring the provision that qualifies that vacation.
14. Thus, even assuming Order 79 applies to the criminal proceedings in question, the very rule relied upon by the GBA expressly preserves the Chief Justice’s power to appoint any day during the vacation ‘for the hearing of causes or matters as circumstances require.’ Vacation therefore cannot mean that no cause or matter may be heard between August 1 and September 30.
15. That distinction matters. Court vacation regulates the ordinary sitting calendar of the court. It does not give counsel a right to prevent a court from sitting. A lawyer may have perfectly legitimate vacation, travel or availability concerns. But those concerns support an application to the court; they do not displace the court’s authority to determine whether a pending matter should proceed.
16. Nor should a lawyer’s vacation ordinarily operate to the prejudice of the client whose interests the lawyer is retained to protect. Where an accused person is on remand, or simply wants a long-pending prosecution resolved, counsel’s preference for vacation cannot automatically become the client’s additional period of detention or delay.
17. Second, the Criminal Procedure Code (Act 30) does not appear to prescribe a two-month criminal vacation. Indeed, sections 82 and 89 contemplate aspects of criminal process operating even on Sundays.
18. More importantly, section 168 says that when the prosecutor and accused appear at the appointed time, the court “shall proceed to hear the case.”
19. Section 169 permits adjournment. But that discretion belongs to the court, not to a lawyer.
20. A lawyer may request an adjournment and give good reasons. But a lawyer does not have a unilateral right to stop a criminal trial merely because counsel is on vacation.
21. The statutory limits are revealing. Section 169 generally limits an adjournment to 30 clear days, and to 14 clear days where the accused is committed to prison.
22. Section 241 follows the same logic for trials on indictment. Postponement or adjournment requires reasonable cause, and the period must itself be reasonable.
23. The point is difficult to miss. Act 30 treats delay in criminal proceedings as something that must be justified, controlled and kept within reasonable limits. It does not treat a two-month legal vacation as an automatic entitlement to suspend a part-heard criminal trial.
24. Indeed, it would be odd to read a civil procedure rule on legal vacations as creating, by implication, a two-month criminal adjournment when the criminal procedure statute itself subjects adjournments to considerably tighter limits.
25. A lawyer’s vacation may therefore be a reason placed before the court. It is not a trump card. The court must still decide whether an adjournment is justified, for how long, and with due regard to the accused person’s liberty and right to a trial within a reasonable time.
26. Nor is there anything conceptually strange about courts functioning during vacation. Vacation courts themselves demonstrate that the institution can continue functioning while individual judges and lawyers take leave.
27. Even Commercial Courts, notwithstanding C.I. 47, have previously sat during the legal vacation to address delay and backlog. If commercial disputes deserve such urgency, surely liberty and criminal justice deserve no less.
28. Third, and most fundamentally, could a rule of court validly require criminal trials to stop for two months regardless of the circumstances?
29. That rule-making power is not unlimited. Indeed, section 80 of Act 459 itself makes the power to prescribe court vacations subject to the Constitution.
30. Rules of court regulate procedure. They cannot override an Act of Parliament, much less the Constitution. Any vacation rule must therefore be construed consistently with Act 30 and constitutional guarantees.
31. Article 19(1) guarantees every accused person a fair hearing within a reasonable time. Article 14(4) makes the concern especially acute where the accused is detained.
32. That protection is not limited to remand prisoners. An accused person on bail also lives with reputational damage, expense, uncertainty and the unresolved threat of punishment.
33. Nor is criminal justice only about lawyers and accused persons. Victims, complainants, witnesses, families and the Republic also await justice.
34. Lawyers deserve work-life balance. So do doctors, nurses, police officers and firefighters. Yet hospitals and police stations do not close for two months. Work-life balance is ordinarily accommodated through leave arrangements that allow the institution to continue functioning.
35. More fundamentally, we should not confuse two different things. The Rules prescribe vacations of the courts. They do not prescribe vacations for lawyers.
36. Lawyers, like other professionals, may take leave. But a lawyer’s personal vacation is not the legal vacation prescribed for the courts, and it does not automatically entitle counsel to a two-month adjournment of a criminal trial.
37. Nor does a vacation of the court mean a shutdown of the court. Order 79 itself makes that clear by expressly empowering the Chief Justice to appoint any day during the vacation for the hearing of causes or matters as circumstances require.
38. That is the critical distinction. Lawyers may take leave. Judges may take leave. The court may be in its legal vacation. Yet justice may still require particular cases to be heard.
39. A court vacation is an administrative arrangement authorized by law. A hearing within a reasonable time is a constitutional guarantee.
40. So let lawyers take their leave. Let judges take theirs. Let prosecutors and court staff take theirs. Arrange the leave as necessary. Keep criminal justice moving.
41. Because criminal justice has no vacation.
42. And where the accused is on remand, a lawyer’s vacation must never become the client’s additional sentence before conviction, especially when the lawyer is retained to protect, not postpone, the client’s liberty.
43. And where the accused is not on remand, a lawyer’s vacation must not unnecessarily prolong the accused’s uncertainty, the victim’s wait, the witness’s burden, or the Republic’s unfinished business.

PS: Yɛde post no bɛto hɔ. Yɛnyɛ comprehension consultants.

Da Yie!