Source: newsthemegh.com
As Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah prepares to leave the bench next month, President Nana Akufo-Addo has proposed Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Torkornoo, a member of the supreme court, as the new Chief Justice.
Following in the footsteps of Justices Georgina Theodora Wood and Sophia Akuffo, Justice Mrs. Torkornoo will become Ghana’s third female Chief Justice provided she is ratified by the parliament.
In a letter to Nana Otuo Serebour, the head of the Council of State, the president declared that Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, who has served on the supreme court since 2019 and has been a member of the judiciary for the past nineteen years, is qualified and fit to fulfill the duties of Chief Justice.
Gertrude Torkornoo is a native of Winneba in Ghana’s Central Region. She was born in Cape Coast on September 11, 1962. She attended Wesley Girls’ High School, where she received her certificate for the ordinary level, and Achimota School, where she received her certificate for the advanced level. She attended the University of Ghana and earned her law degree there in 1986. She earned a Postgraduate Certificate in International Law and Organization from Erasmus University in the Netherlands’ International Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) in 2001. She received an LLM in Intellectual Property Law from Golden Gate University in the United States in 2011. [3]
Judge Torkornoo served as a volunteer at the FIDA Legal Aid Service and completed an internship with Nabarro Nathanson in London before beginning employment as an associate at Fugar & Co. in Accra. In 1994, she rejoined the company (Fugar & Co.) and was made a director. She co-founded Sozo Legal Consult in January 1997, where she served as managing partner until she was named a Judge of the High Court of Ghana on May 14, 2004. [4] Before being promoted to the Court of Appeal in October 2012, she served as a judge on the High Court. In November 2019, Judge Torkornoo received a nomination to the Ghanaian Supreme Court. [3] The day of her inauguration was December 17, 2019.
In the court system, Judge Torkornoo has served in a number of executive positions. As the chair of the E-Justice Committee, she oversaw the acquisition and integration of the use of electronic resources and software in the work of the Judiciary Service, as well as the planning of the automation of all levels of courts.
She has also worked as the Commercial Courts’ Supervising Judge since 2013, where she has organized meetings and events for the Users Committee of the Commercial Courts and determined their agendas.
The Business Environment Engineering Project (BEEP), sponsored by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), was carried out under the supervision of Judge Torkornoo. Her leadership in that initiative sparked the introduction of Users Committees into other institutions that took part in the BEEP project, and she gave the Ministry of Commerce and Industry advice on how to do so. The MOTI’s active development of the Business Environment Reforms into national institutions was further impacted by the BEEP project.
She chairs the Technical Working Group on “Enforcing Contracts,” which was established to guide improvements in the commercial law landscape. ADR reforms in commercial justice delivery in Circuit and High Courts that resulted in the passage of High Court (Civil Procedure) Amendment Rules 2020, CI 133 were among the outcomes of the BEEP project’s work within the judiciary. Other outcomes included the design of necessary reforms in the monitoring and evaluation of data collection currently being implemented by the judiciary, the design of necessary reforms in the post-judgment and execution part of justice delivery, and reforms in streamlining ADR in commercial justice delivery.
Justice Torkornoo has held positions such as those of member of the faculty and chair of the Governing Board of the Judicial Training Institute, vice chair of the Internship and Clerkship Committee of the Judiciary since 2012, member and chair of the E-Judgment Committee since 2010, member and chair of the Publications and Editorial Committee of the Association of Magistrates and Judges of Ghana since 2006, and member and chair of numerous ad hoc committees required for the efficient administration of
Justice Torkornoo has played a key role in the establishment and supervision of various judiciary reform initiatives that have involved the European Union, USAID, DFID, and partnerships with other African nations. Moreover, she has participated in the Law Revision Commission since 2016.
She was a member of the seven-person panel that heard John Mahama’s petition regarding the 2020 election against the Ghanaian Election Commission and Nana Akufo-Addo.