A law lecturer Yaw Oppong is advocating for the establishment of a constitutional court to deal with constitutional matters in order to reduce the volume of work at the Supreme Court.

It has been a great concern to lawyers and judges themselves about the workload at the Supreme Court as judges crumble under the volume of judgements they have to write.

Speaking on Joy FM/MultiTV news analysis programme, Newsfile, Mr. Yaw Oppong partly blamed the constitutional provision which assigns jurisdictions to the courts for the workload at the Supreme Court.

However, no act of parliament or other law can reduce the jurisdiction of the courts assigned them by the constitution, he remarked.

The Supreme Court has been assigned to hear many cases including appeal and land cases. Recently the Supreme Court has been overwhelmed with a number of suits seeking interpretation of certain constitutional provisions. Recently, a police officer Supt. Ayamga Yakubu Akolgo filed a suit at the court challenging the constitutionality of the criminal procedure that makes some offences non-bailable.

Currently, offences including rape, piracy, robbery and treason are considered non-bailable crimes.

But Mr. Oppong who is a law lecturer at the Central University College said it is time a special court is dedicated to such constitutional matters.

“I would wish that we set up a constitutional court, because the Supreme Court has so many cases including appeals, land cases before them, but once again these constitutional cases are coming up. Maybe it is about time we set up a constitutional court to look at these matters specifically.”

The legal practitioner also agreed with a High Court judge who finds it baffling that “if a high court has jurisdiction to hear a criminal matter, why can it not have jurisdiction to hear an application which has been brought pursuant to the exercise of the jurisdiction in the criminal matter?”