It’s a female Chief Justice …Her Ladyship, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo tipped

Her Ladyship, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, a Justice at the Supreme Court, is most likely to be appointed as the 15th Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana after the retirement of the current Chief Justice, His Lordship, Justice Anin Yeboah, in May this year, which is actually next month.

On the retirement on Justice Anim Yeboah, President Akufo-Addo, is required by Article 144 (1) of the Constitution to, in consultation with the Counsel of State and with the approval of Parliament, appoint a Chief Justice who shall be the highest-ranking judge of the Supreme Court and also the head of the Judiciary and responsible for its administration and supervision.

The New Publisher is informed that President Akufo-Addo’s nominee for the position of Chief Justice is most likely to be Her Ladyship, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, a God-fearing mother of 4, an author and a practicing bible-believing Christian who has an unblemished reputation as a fitting leading member of the Judiciary.

A brilliant choice which would go a long way in encouraging and empowering women to strive to rise to the apex of whatever professions they find themselves.
Very few women have risen to the position of Chief Justices and Her Ladyship, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo would become the third in Ghana is the President truly nominates her and Parliament approves same.

Justice Torkornoo is the supervising judge for Commercial Courts of Ghana and holds an LLM in Intellectual Property Law from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, and a PGD in International Law and Organizations for Development from Institute of Social Studies, (now part of Erasmus University) in The Hague. She serves on the board of the Judicial Training Institute and as a faculty member in Judicial Ethics, Case Management, Courtroom Communication, and Commercial Law.

After law school in 1986, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo did her national service with the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Legal Aid Center in Accra.

Her pupillage was with Fugar & Co, where she went on to become an Associate and later, a Director of the firm. In 1989, while an Associate at Fugar & Co, she won an International Bar Association scholarship in Construction Law, which led to her doing a stage with Nabarro Nathanson in London, and specialization in Construction Law. In January 1997, she set up Sozo Law Consult and became the Managing Partner.

After 18 years of law practice, Justice Torkornoo was invited to join the judiciary in 2004 as a Justice of the High Court of Ghana. In October 2012, she was promoted to the Court of Appeal and rose to become a Justice of the Supreme Court, the apex court, in 2019.

Justice Gertrude Torkornoo chairs and serves on several administrative committees of the Judicial Service, her favorite being the Chief Editor of The Bench, the annual magazine of the Association of Magistrates and Judges of Ghana. She is also a Commissioner of the Law Reform Commission of Ghana. In 2015, she received the Ghana Women of Excellence Award on Judicial Integrity. She was made an honorary Fellow of the Ghana Institute of Construction in 2016 for her contributions to the construction industry.

Outside the courtroom, Justice Gertrude Torkornoo is a poet and author of five books – two on poetry and three on the law.

Her writings include ‘Creating Capital from Culture’; ‘An Uneasy Marriage – the relationship between interest rate regimes and debt recovery rates in Ghana (2012), ‘Examining the Borrowers and Lenders Act’ (2015), and ‘The Law on Interests’ (2021).