General News of Tuesday, 23 January 2018
Source: Myjoyonline.com
2018-01-23
Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye
US-based Ghanaian, Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare has petitioned the Speaker of Parliament and the 275 MPs to withdraw the LI seeking to legitimize the entrance examination into the Ghana School of Law (GSL).
The Accounting Professor and public interest law advocate listed 10 reasons for which he said the Legislative Instrument laid in Parliament by the General Legal Council (GLC) which runs the GSL must be withdrawn.
On October 15, 2015, Prof Asare filed a suit against the GLC arguing that the entrance exam and its concomitant interview for admission into the Ghana School of Law were illegal and unconstitutional
After filing the case, the one-man think tank, as he has been described, waged a relentless media campaign for a speedy adjudication of the matter.
Eventually, the highest court of the land gave its ruling in June 2017, declaring it was unconstitutional for the General Legal Council to make it mandatory for Bachelor of Laws (LLB) holders to write an entrance exam as well as pass an interview before they could be admitted into the GSL to pursue professional law course.
The court also ordered the GLC to take steps to implement its orders.
Subsequently, the GLC has gone to Parliament with an LI seeking to regularize and legitimize the entrance examinations.
But Prof. Asare says the Council should not be allowed to use the back legitimize a conduct which the Supreme Court has declared illegal.
The five-page petition says the Legal Profession (Professional and Post-Call Law Course) Regulations, 2017 must be withdrawn from Parliament because:
(1) the Regulation seeks to commandeer Parliament to rubber stamp the General Legal Council’s (Council) prior illegal actions;
(2) the Council’s prior illegal actions have resulted in extraordinary injustice and occasioned uncommon hardship to over 3,000 students;
(3)the proposed Regulation does not provide any relief for the victims of the Council’s illegal actions;
(4) the proposed Regulation, if passed, will conflict with the Supreme Court’s order that the mechanism for 2018 admissions to the Ghana School of Law should be in place by December 22, 2017;
(5) the Council has a duty, under the Legal Profession Act, to provide opportunities for LLB degree holders to qualify as lawyers;
(6) the proposed Regulation seeks to put entrance “tariffs,” unrelated to technical competence, on qualified students;
(7) the entrance tariffs are at variance with the Council’s duty to provide opportunities for law students to qualify as lawyers;
(8) the entrance tariffs effectively implement a quota system to ration out space at the Ghana School of Law at a time when there has been a significant growth in the number of Law Faculties and students interested in entering the Law Profession;
(9) the Law Faculties are alternative places of instruction that can accommodate the growth in the number of students qualified to pursue the professional component of the legal education; and,
(10) Parliament should not allow itself to be used as a vessel for legitimizing the ultra vires actions of administrative bodies or otherwise be seen as partaking in any scheme that perpetuates injustice and robs citizens of their substantive legitimate expectations.”