Atuguba Justifies Research Work on Political Judgments

Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana Raymond Atuguba has defended his recent research work on how Supreme Court Judges rule on political cases.

The Law Professor has been slammed heavily after he released his findings which indicated that some political cases showed that judges voted based on their political orientation and the government that appointed them.

The Chief Justice and some senior Supreme Court judges attacked the former Executive Secretary to President Mahama stating that the conclusion on his research was wrong.

But in a response to comments made by another fellow law lecturer, Ace Ankomah, Professor Atuguba said that his work is only intended to improve the judiciary and not to destroy it.

“We do such research to improve our democracy and our lives. If it hits a rock and doesn’t produce productive change, then the strategy isn’t good enough. So am seeking advice from wiser folks on the best way to present and release the data. Until then, it is embargoed. Am also taking on board the comments from the conference.”

Below is the full response by Prof. Atuguba

Hello my friends. In response to your question, I had a written paper and a PowerPoint of 128 slides. I was given 15 minutes to present, which is normal, although it went a little longer.

So, Bright [Simmons], I, therefore, presented the key info that is enough for an academic discussion and also a public discussion. Purpose of the paper; Background; Methodology; Sampling; Findings (for just some of the judges and then the aggregate data, as this was the longest part of the presentation); and Recommendations. So, Ace, there is more.

But, this is enough for any academic or public high level discussion. To actually thoroughly critique the methodology, sampling, etc, you need to see the paper and the slides.

This will be difficult because my sample is 100% of all political cases decided by the SC in the last 25years, so it is not possible to argue that it’s a small sample of a bigger figure.

Again, I made the definition of political case so narrow that it covers only cases where a political party is involved, e.g NPP v GBC, or where known officials and operatives of a political party are parties to the suit, e.g Tsatsu Tsikata v AG. So there again, you cannot argue that my selection of cases to be tagged political is biased. I take the caution of the CJ seriously.

We do such research to improve our democracy and our lives. If it hits a rock and doesn’t produce productive change, then the strategy isn’t good enough. So am seeking advice from wiser folks on the best way to present and release the data. Until then, it is embargoed. Am also taking on board the comments from the conference.

For example, S.K.B Asante’s comment is leading me to disaggregate the judges according to those nominated from the Bench and those nominated from the Bar and Academia, and run the analyses separately for them, in order to see what comes up.

I also noticed something about the data for the Female judges. Majority appear not to, as we say in Ghana, “play too much politics” in their judgments. Anyways, thanks for your comments.

Source: Starrfmonline