Cooperation and conflict: a history of the judiciary in ghana, 1853-1966

Abstract

This thesis situates the judiciary in Ghana in a historical perspective from 1853, when the first Supreme Court for the Gold Coast was established, signifying the establishment of British judicial system, to the end of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s reign in 1966 when he had, a little earlier, dismissed the first Ghanaian Chief Justice of independent Ghana. Using a qualitative approach, and utilizing both primary and secondary data, the study analyses the processes leading to the establishment and operations of British-styled courts in the Gold Coast and the relationship that existed between the judiciary and the executive arm of the colonial administration on the one hand, and between the British courts and the previously existing chiefs’ courts, on the other. The study highlights the fact that some chiefs and people of the colony negatively reacted to the British courts, largely because the powers of the chiefs were encroached upon and gradually eroded. Some chiefs were arrested, imprisoned, and even exiled for challenging the activities of the colonial administration and the rulings of the British courts. The study also discusses the passage of ordinances that set up courts run by Ghanaians which augmented the activities of the understaffed British courts and further regulated, almost to their extinction, the operations of the chiefs’ courts. The study argues that there existed a cordial relationship between the British-styled courts and the officials of the colonial administration while the relationship between the chiefs’ courts and the same administration remained frosty. The relationship between the Local Courts and the Convention People’s Party government that ruled the country from 1951 to 1966 deteriorated over the years as did the relationship between the executive and the judiciary.