A Ghanaian Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Law Faculty is blaming the inconsistency of the General Legal Council (GLC) for the many issues affecting the legal profession and the smooth operation of the Ghana School of Law.
Dr Theophilus Edwin Coleman said that the GLC is treating “legal education in Ghana like an object that appears to them in a room.”
“Today, 50-50 each in Part A & B. Even in a day, they can take a decision in the morning and approach it differently in the evening. Tomorrow, the same entity will say two years for a professional course, the next day, you must have been called to [the] Ghana Bar before you can teach at a university,” he wrote on Facebook on Monday.
The GLC has come under some criticisms after some 499 law students who passed its entrance exams were denied admission for failing to record 50% each in Part 1 & 2, a requirement which was not communicated to the students prior to the exam.
Members of Parliament, through a Resolution of the House, have asked the GLC to admit the 499 students, but the Attorney-General, Godfred Dame, has said that Parliament is devoid of power through the use of Parliamentary resolutions, to control the process of admission into the GLC. “The mode of exercising legislative power enshrined in Article 106 of the Constitution does not admit of Resolutions.”
But Dr Coleman said legal education in the country would not be facing this type of issue if the GLC had been consistent on the admission requirements at the GLC.
He said there is a need for some creativity and innovation in order to address the issues that the Ghana School of Law is faced with.
“The ideas are finished. No innovation. No creativity. We just have to be frank,” he said.