An E-judgement Library for judges was on Monday inaugurated in Accra to provide judges with easy access to judgement delivered in all the jurisdictions and various specialised courts in the country.
The library would also provide judges with the available data-base to obtain particularised search results while being able to highlight and copy portions of a particular judgement, paste it on another document and have the means to print the judgement.
Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, the Chief Justice, in a speech read on her behalf, said the platform would be an improvement on the Judicial Training Institute System.
She said it would be available to judges anywhere, anytime, and at no cost.
‘As an equivalent of a major research library on the desk of every judge, with research capabilities beyond what currently exists in the judicial service, the research task of judges would become easier and impact on the ability to deliver judgement speedily,’ the Chief Justice said.
She said legal research formed an important component of judgement writing and that the library would foster easy and speedy sharing of knowledge among judges.
The Chief Justice said, over the years, judges and lawyers had resorted to doing research manually using hard copies of law reports but the time had now come for them to migrate to a more effective and efficient system.
‘We in the judiciary acknowledge that we can no longer rely on the age-old methods of legal research. Rather we need to harness the power of the electronics and the internet to make our work simpler, faster and more efficient,’ she said.
The Chief Justice later commended the effort of the committee who worked tirelessly to create the library and urged all judges to endeavour to make use of the platform to achieve a more effective and efficient justice delivery system in Ghana.