HER LADYSHIP JUSTICE SEDINAM AWO KWADAM (MRS.)*
ABSTRACT
Promulgating a new Constitution does not, by itself, bring the inherited body of ordinary law into conformity with it. Ghana’s experience after 1992 shows the consequences of leaving that work to individual Supreme Court challenges and legislative interventions, without a demonstrated broad-based review. Martin Kpebu Nos 1 and 2 illustrate what delayed correction can mean for personal liberty. With constitutional review complete and an Implementation Committee established, this paper proposes a permanent Constitutional Conformity Committee (CCC) to begin work after the new Constitution has been successfully promulgated. The Committee would first examine inherited law systematically, then maintain conformity on an ongoing basis. Drawing on Ghanaian authorities, the 2011 and 2025 review reports, the 2012 White Paper and South Africa’s Project 25, the paper favours a strengthened Law Reform Commission as its institutional home, subject to the new constitutional arrangements. The CCC would have an odd number of members, sufficient for its work, with broad representation that includes academia, people with judicial experience, the Bar and Public Affairs. Public participation would be required by statute. The Committee would submit reasoned recommendations for amendment or repeal to the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, who would have to accept them wholly or with modifications, defer them or reject them, giving reasons in each case. The Attorney-General would also be required to initiate appropriate legislative action on accepted recommendations. A public register would track recommendations through official responses, legal correction and verified implementation. Parliament would retain legislative authority, and the courts would remain the final authority on constitutional adjudication. In this way, an initial review for conformity would lead into permanent, publicly accountable constitutional maintenance.
Keywords: Ghana; constitutional reform; post-promulgation review; constitutional maintenance; perpetual conformity; Constitutional Conformity Committee; public participation; Martin Kpebu; SALRC Project 25.
I INTRODUCTION
A Constitution is a solemn undertaking to the living and to those who will inherit the Republic. Promulgation begins the work of fulfilling that undertaking through the laws and practices that govern daily life. Ghana’s experience under the 1992 Constitution gives this obligation particular urgency. Even where a constitutional guarantee exists, an inconsistent statutory rule may continue to shape official conduct until someone secures its correction. For a person deprived of liberty, a later judgment vindicating the constitutional principle cannot restore the days already lost. The next constitutional settlement should therefore be followed by an organised examination of the existing laws through which its promises must take effect.
The historical concern is that no broad-based examination of legal conformity after the promulgation of the 1992 Constitution has been demonstrated. The authorities considered here show corrections made over many years through individual Supreme Court proceedings and parliamentary interventions. Criminal libel and sedition provisions were repealed in 2001 expressly to bring the law into constitutional conformity. In 2015, Martin Kpebu No. 1 invalidated a rule permitting the imprisonment of sureties; in 2016, Martin Kpebu No. 2 removed categorical exclusions from bail consideration.[1] These decisions achieved important corrections, but they also reveal the cost of waiting for separate challenges. A continuing institutional responsibility is needed to examine the laws that remain unreviewed.
The completion of the Constitution Review Committee’s work and the establishment of a Constitution Review Implementation Committee make this an appropriate time to consider that responsibility.[2] Once the new Constitution has been successfully and lawfully promulgated, Ghana should establish a permanent Constitutional Conformity Committee. It would begin by testing inherited law against the new constitutional settlement, then examine later developments and follow accepted corrections through to implementation. This role would be distinct from the Implementation Committee’s present task of advancing the review proposals. Nor would scrutiny of ordinary law replace periodic review of the Constitution itself.
Throughout this paper, “the new Constitution” refers to a future constitutional settlement. Neither a completed report nor the inauguration of an implementation body means that a new constitutional text is already in force. The paper therefore assumes neither future article numbers nor the eventual allocation of institutional powers. The 1992 Constitution provides historical evidence and domestic precedents, but the CCC’s authority and the standard it applies would come from the settlement actually promulgated and legislation validly made under it. The proposed roles of Parliament, the courts and the Attorney-General would need to be secured within that settlement.
The paper uses doctrinal and comparative analysis rather than attempting to measure constitutional failure statistically. The cases identify particular defects and the means by which they were corrected. They neither count all affected citizens nor establish that every earlier detention was unlawful, and they do not amount to an exhaustive survey of past law-reform initiatives. The historical claim is limited to the absence, in the documentary record examined, of a demonstrated general review after promulgation. Similarly, South Africa’s experience offers institutional lessons without proving that the same arrangements would produce identical results in Ghana. These limits keep the argument within the evidence while preserving its preventive purpose.
II THE CONFORMITY GAP AFTER 1992
The 1992 Constitution already required legal conformity. Article 1(2) made inconsistent law void to the extent of the inconsistency, while article 11(5) continued existing law subject to the Constitution. Article 11(6) required the modifications necessary to bring that law into conformity, and the transitional provisions also addressed continuity and constitutional consistency.[3] Constitutional supremacy therefore did not depend on the repeal of each offending provision. In practice, however, supremacy alone could not identify every inconsistency, resolve disputed interpretations, correct every publication or change every administrative routine. What was missing was a systematic process for applying that legal command across the inherited body of law.
Article 11(4) used “existing law” in a technical sense: law in existence immediately before constitutional commencement, together with earlier instruments intended to take effect later. In the proposed new order, “inherited law” would mean the ordinary law carried forward under the new settlement’s own transitional provisions. It would include both surviving pre-1992 enactments and Fourth Republic legislation. That distinction matters because a review should not overlook a law merely because Parliament enacted or amended it after 1992. Democratic enactment would not, by itself, establish conformity with the new constitutional standard.
Responsibility for constitutional conformity was already shared under the 1992 framework. Articles 2, 33 and 130 provided routes to the courts; article 12(1) bound the principal organs of government; Parliament could correct legislation; and the Law Reform Commission had a mandate to investigate and recommend reform.[4] These arrangements were indispensable, but they did not in themselves establish a broad conformity programme. Constitutional litigation still required someone to identify a controversy, bring it before a court and obtain a decision. Legislative amendments could correct related provisions while leaving responsibility for the rest of the statute book unassigned. Giving institutions general responsibilities was therefore different from ensuring systematic coverage.
The courts, moreover, were not limited to abstract declarations: articles 2(2)–(3), 33(2) and 126(4) supported effective relief and enforcement.[5] The concern is dependence on episodic correction, not a lack of judicial power. Even a court capable of ordering extensive relief may act only after people have been exposed to the challenged rule, and its decision depends on the questions properly before it. “Ad hoc” thus describes the selection and timing of challenges, not a lack of legal discipline in adjudication. Research across related laws can supplement litigation without assuming its authoritative force.
Constitutional maintenance must attend to both legal validity and practical effect. A repealed provision may remain visible in a historical text even though it is no longer law. Conversely, an invalidated provision may still influence forms, instructions or mistaken official conduct. Publishing a revised text does not, on its own, establish compliance in practice. A sound process must therefore distinguish the law currently in force, the legal issue raised and the corrective work still required. The CCC would bring these inquiries together in a public record while preserving access to immediate judicial protection against an ongoing violation.
III DELAYED CORRECTION AND ITS HUMAN CONSEQUENCES
A. Martin Kpebu Nos. 1 and 2
In Martin Kpebu No. 1, decided on 1 December 2015, the Supreme Court considered section 104(4) of the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) Act 1960 (Act 30). The provision allowed imprisonment for up to six months where a forfeited recognizance penalty remained unpaid and could not be recovered by attachment and sale. The Court unanimously struck it down as inconsistent with personal liberty under article 14(1) and the requirement in article 19(11) that criminal offences be defined in written law.[6] A civil recognizance obligation could not simply be converted into a criminal offence justifying imprisonment. The obligations under section 104(1), (2), (3) and (6) remained intact.[7] The judgment thus removed a particular route to imprisonment without abolishing recognizances or every lawful means of enforcing them.
Almost twenty-three years after constitutional commencement, an individual constitutional action was still needed to secure that correction. For the next transition, the lesson is that inherited coercive powers should be examined together, including the consequences of their enforcement, rather than leaving each disputed subsection to await a separate challenge.
Martin Kpebu No. 2, decided on 5 May 2016, concerned the categorical exclusions from bail in section 96(7) of Act 30. The challenged provision included amendments made in 2002 and 2008 to an inherited procedural statute. Its bail regime had therefore also changed under the Fourth Republic; the challenge was not to an unchanged rule from 1960. The Court invalidated the exclusion, with Benin JSC explaining the connection between personal liberty, the presumption of innocence and judicial assessment of detention.[8] The case shows why an initial review must be followed by continuing maintenance, since that review alone could not address every later amendment.
The judgment made bail consideration available without requiring release in every case. Courts remained responsible for assessing individual circumstances and lawful grounds for detention. Refusing to consider bail solely because an offence fell within an invalid categorical prohibition was different from refusing bail after a lawful assessment. Adinyira and Gbadegbe JJSC dissented, while Benin JSC rejected the separately advanced dignity argument as insufficiently established.[9] Those limits and disagreements must remain part of the account; the judgment cannot be treated as a general declaration about all past detention.
Together, these cases show how gaps in constitutional conformity can lead to miscarriages of justice affecting liberty. An unconstitutional mechanism for imprisonment, or a denial of bail consideration, has consequences for people’s freedom that a later declaration cannot undo: days spent in custody cannot be returned. The judgments do not identify everyone affected or resolve every claim for compensation. They support a more specific institutional argument: provisions with such consequences should be examined systematically, without requiring successive litigants to initiate every inquiry. That examination should reduce avoidable exposure to harm, while courts remain available whenever prevention fails.
B. Legislative correction and later constitutional defects
Legislative correction offers another example. The Criminal Code (Repeal of Criminal Libel and Seditious Laws) (Amendment) Act 2001 (Act 602) expressly linked repeal to constitutional conformity. Section 1 removed sections 112–119, 182A, 183, 183A and 185 of Act 29. The Act received assent on 2 August 2001, about eight years and seven months after constitutional commencement, and section 2 addressed pending prosecutions and prohibited specified future prosecutions.[10] The legislation therefore corrected a group of provisions and addressed the consequences of repeal. It did not, however, provide general compensation or reopen every final conviction, and the repeal of former section 185 did not settle the constitutionality of surviving section 208.
Nana Adjei Ampofo shows that the problem also extends to laws enacted under the Fourth Republic. On 20 July 2011, the Supreme Court invalidated section 63(d) of the Chieftaincy Act 2008, which criminalised deliberate refusal of a chief’s call to attend to an issue. The Court distinguished a chief’s call from a judicial committee’s subpoena, and consensual customary arbitration from statutory coercion. Its decision turned on freedom of movement and the breadth of the power, including the absence of a reasonable-excuse defence.[11] Constitutional protection of chieftaincy did not place every statutory power conferred on a chief beyond challenge.
The scope of the decision is equally important. Only subsection (d) was struck down. Other challenges failed on the grounds advanced, and the Court did not accept every argument about vagueness or overbreadth. Its suggestions for narrower replacement legislation did not amount to approval of a future law that had yet to be written.[12] A conformity register must preserve these distinctions by identifying the exact words invalidated, related materials requiring correction and questions left unresolved. Calling the entire Act unconstitutional, or treating a failed ground as settling every possible future challenge, would undermine the accuracy the institution is intended to provide.
Later cases reveal other aspects of the maintenance task. In Ezuame Mannan, section 43 of the Narcotics Control Commission Act 2020 was invalidated because of the legislative procedure followed. The disagreement within the Court concerned article 106, rather than an absolute prohibition on legislation governing industrial or medicinal cannabis. The memorandum to the 2023 amendment Bill expressly linked the proposed correction to the judgment.[13]
Appiagyei-Atua concerned a different defect. The Imposition of Restrictions Act 2020 was invalidated because it created an alternative route to emergency powers outside the constitutional safeguards; the decision did not exclude every lawful public-health restriction.[14] In Adu-Gyamfi, the Court severed “charged with or” from specified Companies Act disqualification provisions, preserving the remaining text and distinguishing a judicial process for determining culpability.[15]
These cases call for different responses, including repeal, severance, procedural correction, reconsideration of exceptional powers and revision of administrative materials. They also show why the initial review and the continuing mandate belong together. Broad scrutiny of inherited law should follow the new Constitution, but later enactments and amendments may create fresh defects. The cases demonstrate that correction can eventually be secured and that timely examination matters. They do not establish that a CCC would eliminate disagreement or prevent every injustice. Its value would have to be demonstrated through a workable allocation of responsibilities and an assessment of results.
IV. CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW AND THE NEXT TRANSITION
The 2011 review report distinguished between constitutional amendments, ordinary legislative changes and administrative action. It recorded 83,161 formal submissions, which it assessed qualitatively rather than treating them as a representative national poll. The report acknowledged the Law Reform Commission’s role, recorded proposals for permanent constitutional review and recommended technical assistance with implementation.[16] The 2012 White Paper then proposed a five-member implementation committee within the existing amendment framework.[17] That earlier body was distinct from the Implementation Committee associated with the completed 2025 review. Both must also be distinguished from the future CCC proposed in this paper.
The 2025 report recommends constitutional review every twenty-five years, with participation and publication. The discussion leading to that recommendation considers institutional options and legislation for a review mechanism.[18] Its focus is the Constitution itself. The CCC, by contrast, would begin with the ordinary laws inherited under the new settlement and then keep their conformity under review. Completion of the report does not mean that the CCC has been adopted. Nor does an implementation committee become a permanent conformity body simply because both undertake work connected with constitutional reform.
The legal sequence matters. Review identifies proposals, and implementation takes them through the competent process. Lawful promulgation then establishes the new constitutional standard against which the CCC would examine inherited law. Under the present framework, Chapter 25 governs constitutional amendment and provides different procedures for entrenched and non-entrenched provisions.[19] Establishing the CCC would depend on successful completion of that constitutional process. The paper neither assumes the eventual text nor proposes that this Committee begin work under the 1992 Constitution. Existing institutions would continue to discharge their present duties in the meantime.
The 2025 report also identifies laws whose operation is impeded because the necessary regulations have not been made. It proposes a twelve-month period for making those regulations, with parliamentary censure for non-compliance.[20] This remains a recommendation, not an existing general deadline, but it illustrates how essential work can remain unfinished after a legislative decision. The future CCC should identify each applicable duty, the institution responsible and the lawful deadline, while distinguishing enactment from commencement and implementation. The completed review therefore provides an occasion for the proposal and identifies concerns that support it; it does not supply the legal authority or a complete blueprint for the new body.
V. WHAT SOUTH AFRICA’S PROJECT 25 CONTRIBUTES
South Africa’s Project 25 shows how organised statutory review can reach beyond individual disputes. Cabinet approved a review focused on discrimination in 2003, and in February 2004 the South African Law Reform Commission added an investigation of statutes dating from 1910 to its programme. A provisional audit identified approximately 2,800 national statutes, including amendments and partly repealed laws.[21] That figure represented an inventory for examination, not a count of unconstitutional enactments. Ghana would need its own inventory, resources and account of the laws carried forward into the new constitutional order.
Project 25 did not attempt comprehensive constitutional certification. The Health Report focused on provisions plainly inconsistent with equality, distinguishing irrational differentiation, unfair discrimination on listed grounds and discrimination affecting dignity. Apparently neutral provisions with potentially discriminatory effects were left to judicial processes, with time and capacity helping to explain that limit.[22] This makes publication of each inquiry’s scope essential. Ghana’s permanent mandate should allow examination of how laws operate in practice as well as defects in their wording, while recognising that a completed project cannot settle every possible constitutional question.
The project brought together departmental inventories, preliminary findings, consultation, discussion papers and final reports accompanied by draft Bills. Departments could explain why apparently obsolete provisions still mattered to accrued claims or transitional arrangements. The Health review covered 108 Acts, but its discussion paper initially received no comments and had to be circulated again before comments arrived.[23] The experience shows why researchers need administrative knowledge and why public participation requires an active assessment of who has been reached. Publication alone is not evidence that affected people have been heard.
The 2019–20 Annual Report recorded thirty consultation papers, twenty-seven discussion papers and twenty-seven approved reports, with recommendations to repeal 622 enactments in full and to repeal in part or amend 371.[24] These figures describe research outputs and proposed reforms. Some areas remained unassigned, while other investigations ended following reports of departmental review. The figures therefore show neither a complete central audit nor that every recommendation became law. Effective coordination requires a record of what was examined and how the work was dealt with, including who remains responsible when an inquiry returns to a department.
Looking back on the ten-year project, the 2024–25 Annual Report described more than thirty reports but disappointing departmental uptake, which it attributed to limited urgency, capacity and resources.[25] That retrospective figure should be kept separate from the earlier count of twenty-seven reports. The difficulty of securing implementation supports a duty to respond to individual recommendations and to make follow-up public, but it also reveals the limits of those measures. Deadlines cannot provide drafting staff, legislative time or political agreement. The report’s concerns about governance and capacity also favour an express statutory mandate, rather than reliance solely on expectations drawn from general law-reform functions.[26]
The comparison offers a method that Ghana can assess in its own circumstances. Departmental research can clarify responsibility, thematic inquiries can bring overlapping laws into view, and publication can reveal where correction remains incomplete. Ghana’s constitutional setting and resources differ from South Africa’s, so converting budgets or copying provincial arrangements would not establish that an institution is suitable. Scholarship on institutional design likewise cautions against assuming that desirable abstract objectives will produce effective institutions.[27] The CCC should therefore be assessed alongside plausible domestic alternatives, including stronger existing law-reform work and parliamentary research, and in light of the capacity to put recommendations into effect.
VI. THE MANDATE AND ITS INSTITUTIONAL HOME
The CCC should be established promptly after successful promulgation and given two express responsibilities: to examine inherited ordinary law against the new Constitution, and to scrutinise later legislation while monitoring corrective work. Describing constitutional maintenance as a “going concern” means that responsibility, expertise, records and resources would continue beyond the initial review or a change of government. “Perpetual conformity” similarly expresses a continuing duty of attention, without suggesting that every legal question can be settled once and for all.
The initial programme should aim to cover the whole body of inherited law, with the work carried out in phases. Its inventory should identify each law’s authoritative text, amendments, commencement, administering institution and subsidiary instruments. The transitional provisions must determine which laws survive, which are displaced and which are temporarily saved. Until a law has been reviewed, it should be labelled unreviewed; that status should neither certify its validity nor automatically suspend it. Priorities should take account of the seriousness and immediacy of harm, the populations affected and the constitutional changes made. The Kpebu Nos. 1 and 2 cases support early attention to criminal procedure, with related powers examined thematically across departments.
A strengthened Law Reform Commission would be the preferred institutional home, provided it is retained or appropriately reconstituted under the new arrangements. Act 822 offers relevant experience in investigation, reform recommendations, committees and staffing, as well as a Law Reform Fund.[28] Drawing on these capacities could reduce administrative duplication, but the Commission’s general mandate would not replace the new duties of broad coverage, participation, independent publication, official response and verification. If Act 822 remains in force, it should be amended to establish those duties expressly and to distinguish the CCC’s control over its findings and recommendations from the Commission’s management of staff and finances.
Any governance provisions carried forward would also need scrutiny. Renewable four-year Board terms, revocation by presidential letter, reporting through the Minister and restrictions on disclosure may need to be reconciled with protected tenure for CCC members and independent publication.[29] These provisions raise drafting questions; they do not establish misconduct by the Commission. Final reports should be sent to the Attorney-General, published at the same time and provided to Parliament. A separate statutory body would be justified only if a published assessment showed that the preferred institutional home could not provide independence, capacity and accountable operation at reasonable cost.
The arrangement must be authorised by the new constitutional settlement. Constitutional recognition could protect the maintenance function while leaving operational details to legislation. Establishment by statute could offer greater flexibility, though its safeguards would be open to ordinary amendment. The appropriate balance would depend on the text ultimately promulgated. In either case, the CCC’s role would be advisory: it would investigate and recommend, while the executive would respond and advance accepted measures. Parliament would decide on legislation through the new constitutional procedures, including any applicable assent requirements, and the courts would retain final authority in adjudication. The CCC should have neither a legislative veto nor power to issue certificates shielding laws from challenge.
The framework should also specify how the CCC would cooperate with institutions retained or established under the new order. Rights and administrative-justice bodies could refer recurring problems, while customary authorities and affected communities could inform its inquiries. Civic-education institutions could help make participation accessible. The 1992 mandates of CHRAJ, the National House of Chiefs and the NCCE provide domestic experience on which to draw, without implying that every present arrangement will survive unchanged.[30] Referrals must not subordinate these institutions to the CCC or interrupt individual complaints. Each would remain responsible for its own lawful functions, while the CCC would provide a coordinated examination of the underlying law.
VII. MEMBERSHIP, INDEPENDENCE AND CAPACITY
The enabling law should provide for an odd number of voting members, with a membership large enough for the scope, complexity and expected volume of work. It should expressly include academia, people with judicial experience, the Bar and Public Affairs, alongside relevant public institutions, civil society and affected communities. A majority should serve in a personal capacity. Here, “Public Affairs” means expertise in policy, administration, civic communication and public engagement. Taken together, members’ expertise should cover constitutional law, drafting, statutory revision, empirical research, customary law and rights. Selection should seek gender balance, geographical breadth and experience in disability rights. An odd number would facilitate majority voting, although vacancies or recusals could still produce deadlock.
VIII. RESEARCH AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AS STATUTORY DUTIES
Public access should be continuous and free, without requiring technical pleadings or proof of personal injury. The secretariat should acknowledge receipt of submissions and communicate the eventual outcome of their assessment.
IX. THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL’S RESPONSE AND VERIFIED IMPLEMENTATION
Every final recommendation should be numbered, sent to the Office of the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, and published with the date of transmission. The enabling framework should require a reasoned response within a reasonable period, stating whether the recommendation is accepted wholly or with modifications, deferred or rejected. The Attorney-General would coordinate that response even where another department administers the law. The Office’s participation in the research would not discharge its later duty to respond. This obligation to address each recommendation is a new proposal, rather than a duty already imposed by Act 822.[31]
The duty to respond should continue through changes of government or office-holder.
A public register should link each inquiry to its review, recommendation, official response, legislative steps and record of implementation.
X. IMPLEMENTATION, EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
Following promulgation, the necessary enabling authority, appointments, staffing and funding should be put in place promptly so that the CCC can begin its work.
Ghana’s experience since 1992 shows why this work matters. Constitutional supremacy has coexisted with a prolonged reliance on individual judicial challenges and legislative corrections. Martin Kpebu Nos 1 and 2 reveal the human significance of that delay: rules affecting liberty cannot be treated as merely untidy drafting. The completed review process offers an opportunity to provide for a different approach once the new Constitution has been successfully promulgated. Broad examination of inherited law should begin at the outset, followed by constitutional maintenance as a continuing public responsibility.
The proposed CCC would put that responsibility into practice through research, representative expertise, statutory participation and reasoned recommendations. The Attorney-General would respond and advance accepted corrections, Parliament would decide on legislation, and the courts would retain authoritative adjudication. The public would be able to follow the process through to verified implementation. The proposal neither promises perfect law nor transfers constitutional power to a committee. Its purpose is to give the constitutional promise systematic attention before avoidable injury accumulates, and to sustain the work of correction long after the first review is complete.
*Justice of the High Court, Republic of Ghana; Patron – Federation of African Law Students – Ghana Chapter; Adjunct Lecturer, International Criminal Law and Justice (ICL&J), Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA); LL.M.(Distinction) International Criminal Law and Justice (ICL&J) International Criminal Court (ICC) Elective, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) (2025); Valedictorian, 2025 Masters Cohort (GIMPA); Participant, ICC Summer School, Utrecht University (2025); Barrister-at-Law (BL), Ghana School of Law (2012); Best Student, Law of Evidence (2012 Call to the Bar); LLB, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST); Achimota School (2002). ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2932-6728
The views expressed are personal and do not reflect the position of any institution.
[1] Act 602, long title and ss 1–2. Full Kpebu citations and the scope of each decision appear in notes 6–9 below.
[2] Information Services Department, ‘Attorney General Inaugurates Committee to Implement Constitutional Review Proposals’ (31 August 2026), www.isd.gov.gh/attorney-general-inaugurates-committee-to-implement-constitutional-review-proposals/ (accessed 08 September 2026).
[3] Constitution of the Republic of Ghana 1992, arts 1(2), 11(4)–(6); First Schedule, ss 31 and 37(2).
[4] Ghana Constitution, arts 2, 12(1), 33, 93(2), 106 and 130; Law Reform Commission Act 2011 (Act 822), ss 1–3.
[5] Ghana Constitution, arts 2(2)–(3), 33(2), 126(4) and 130(1)–(2); legal aid is addressed in art 294.
[6] Martin Kpebu v Attorney-General (No. 1) (J1/7/2015) [2015] GHASC 114 (SC, 1 December 2015) 4–5, 19–20 and 23.
[7] Kpebu (No. 1), 30–32 (Akamba JSC).
[8] Martin Kpebu v Attorney-General (No. 2) (J1/13/2015) [2016] GHASC 15 (SC, 5 May 2016) 2 and 14–15 (Benin JSC). Amendments: Act 633, s 7; Act 762, s 41(1)(a).
[9] Kpebu (No. 2), 5–6, 14–17, 31–35 and 75–109. The final portions contain the dissenting judgments.
[10] Criminal Code (Repeal of Criminal Libel and Seditious Laws) (Amendment) Act 2001 (Act 602), long title, ss 1–2 and assent date; PNDCL 282, s 1 (commencement on 7 January 1993); Act 29, former s 185 and s 208.
[11] Nana Adjei Ampofo v Attorney-General and President of the National House of Chiefs [2011] DLSC4108 (SC, 20 July 2011) 5–16; Chieftaincy Act 2008 (Act 759), ss 30 and 63(d). Pinpoints use the supplied DLSC transcript; the judgment is also [2011] GHASC 54.
[12] Nana Adjei Ampofo, 16–20; Ghana Constitution, arts 21(1)(g) and 270.
[13] Ezuame Mannan v Attorney-General and Speaker of Parliament (J1/11/2021, SC, 27 July 2022) 25–29, 81–82 and 101–103; Narcotics Control Commission (Amendment) Bill 2023, memorandum, opening two paragraphs.
[14] Appiagyei-Atua and seven others v Attorney-General (J1/14/2022) [2023] GHASC 32 (SC, 31 May 2023), Amegatcher JSC, discussion of article 21(4) and conclusion; Ghana Constitution, arts 31–32.
[15] Adu-Gyamfi v Attorney-General (J1/18/2022, SC, 8 November 2023) 27–34 (Pwamang JSC, concurring); Companies Act 2019 (Act 992), ss 13(2)(h)(i)–(ii), 172(2)(a)(i)–(ii) and 177(1)(c), (e).
[16] 2011 Commission Report, 2, 24–27, 747 (ch 14, para 14(e)–(g)), 750 (para 23(b)) and 809 (ch 15, paras 1–6).
[17] 2012 White Paper, 3, section 2.
[18] 2025 Committee Report, paras 9.47–9.56, especially para 9.56. The final recommendation is twenty-five years; earlier models discussed in the report are distinct.
[19] Ghana Constitution, arts 289–292, especially arts 289(2), 290(1)(c) and 291.
[20] 2025 Committee Report, paras 2.77–2.79.
[21] SALRC Health Report, paras 1.3 and 1.5–1.7.
[22] SALRC Health Report, paras 1.13–1.15.
[23] SALRC Health Report, paras 1.16–1.19.
[24] SALRC, Annual Report 2019/2020, 9–10.
[25] SALRC, Annual Report 2024/2025, 46. The equivalent discussion is at 57 in the separately paginated 73-page copy.
[26] SALRC, Annual Report 2024/2025, 43; the whole-Commission budget is reported at 15 and is not a Project 25 budget.
[27] Cass R Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, ‘Interpretation and Institutions’ (2003) 101 Michigan Law Review 885.
[28] Act 822, ss 3, 8 and 10–16. Its present committee power supplies institutional experience, not authority to commence the future CCC before promulgation.
[29] Act 822, ss 5(1), 5(5), 18 and 19.
[30] Ghana Constitution, arts 218, 225, 233 and 272; see also art 106(3). These are domestic precedents; future relationships must follow the new settlement.
[31] Compare Act 822, ss 3(b), 3(d), 18 and 21. The proposed response duty adds recommendation-specific obligations to the future enabling framework.
