Legal practitioner Markin Kpebu has clarified the legal position regarding former Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo’s removal, emphasising that once a Chief Justice loses her office, she automatically ceases to be a Justice of the Supreme Court.
“There is no ambiguity based on established rulings that when a Chief Justice loses her position, she ceases to become a Justice of the Supreme Court,” Kpebu told Key Points on TV3 on Saturday, September 20.
His comments come in the context of Justice Torkornoo’s application to the High Court seeking to overturn President John Dramani Mahama’s decision removing her from the Supreme Court, which she has described as unconstitutional and unlawful.
In her judicial review petition, Justice Torkornoo argues that the petition against her was focused solely on her role as Chief Justice, yet President Mahama extended the removal to her position as a Justice of the Supreme Court.
She insists the Constitution outlines separate procedures for removing a Chief Justice and for removing a Justice of the Superior Courts, and that the committee which investigated her lacked authority to recommend her removal from the Supreme Court.
Justice Torkornoo is seeking an order of certiorari to quash the presidential warrant issued on September 1, a declaration that only a committee constituted under Article 146(4) can recommend the removal of a Justice of the Superior Courts, and confirmation that the President has no independent power to remove a Justice outside this process.
Her affidavit stresses that “the prescribed procedure … is, in the wisdom of the framers of the Constitution, distinct from the mandated procedure for the removal of a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana.”
The former Chief Justice filed the application under Article 141, invoking the supervisory powers of the High Court to check unlawful or excessive acts by state bodies. President Mahama’s warrant followed a five-member committee’s recommendation to remove her as Chief Justice under Article 146(6).
