Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie has rejected the position that lawyers may decline to proceed with cases simply because those cases have been scheduled during the legal vacation, insisting that a judge who is sitting and ready to hear a matter cannot be stopped by counsel’s personal arrangements. He made the remarks at the second Quadrennial Delegates Congress of the Senior Staff Association of the Judicial Service of Ghana, held in Sunyani in the Bono Region.
The Chief Justice said lawyers may take leave during the vacation only where their clients permit it, and he drew a firm line between administrative direction and judicial decision, telling the congress that adjournments belong to the judge hearing a case rather than to his own office.
His intervention answers a letter from the Ghana Bar Association that had urged him to spare lawyers who declared themselves unavailable for the period.
A judge Who Is Ready To Sit Cannot Be Stopped
The Chief Justice put the principle in blunt terms, framing the objection as one that inverts the relationship between bench and bar. He criticised the suggestion that a lawyer could write to him announcing that a case should not proceed because other plans had already been made.
Justice Baffoe-Bonnie then located the decision where he says it belongs, in the relationship between a lawyer and the person who has retained them.
“You are a lawyer, you have your clients. If your clients decide to give you leave, well, go on leave, but you cannot say that there is a legal vacation and the judge who is actually sitting cannot do your case. No, that is not it”.
Chief Justice Paul Baffour Bonnie
The formulation reframes the dispute. A lawyer’s rest during the vacation becomes a matter of instruction from a client rather than an entitlement drawn from the court calendar, and a client with a part-heard criminal trial has an obvious interest in seeing it move.
Adjournment, A Judicial Act
The Chief Justice also addressed the assumption that his office can direct when cases pause, and he described that assumption as a basic misunderstanding of how courts work. “No, adjournments are not at the instance of the Chief Justice. Adjournment is a judicial act. This is something that is so basic,” he said.
The distinction matters for where the Bar has directed its complaint. If adjournment rests with the trial judge, then a letter to the Chief Justice cannot deliver what the petitioning firms are asking for, and each application would have to be made to the judge seized of the case.
The remarks follow a letter dated 10 August 2026 in which the Ghana Bar Association appealed to the Chief Justice over lawyers being required to appear in court during the legal vacation. The Association argued that counsel who had indicated their unavailability should not be compelled to attend proceedings.
It said it was responding to petitions from Zoe, Akyea & Co, Dame & Partners, and Sam Okudzeto & Associates, which had received notices requiring their lawyers to appear before judges designated to continue part-heard criminal cases during the vacation.
The Association explained that under the High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules, 2004, CI 47, and particularly Order 79, Rule 4, the High Court observes three vacations each year, with the second and longest running from 1 August to 30 September. That period, it said, is intended to give lawyers, judges and judicial staff a break after the second term of the legal calendar.
The Bar’s Position On Unavailability
The Association acknowledged that Vacation Courts and Virtual Courts may handle urgent matters, including interlocutory applications, while maintaining that trials are ordinarily not conducted during the period.
Its central claim concerned the weight to be given to counsel’s own position. “Once Counsel in a matter indicates their unavailability to attend Court during the vacation, even though the Court may have listed their case, it cannot proceed with the case in any way,” the Association stated.
It further argued that parties in civil and criminal cases should not be compelled to represent themselves where their lawyers are absent during the vacation, a scenario it presented as the practical consequence of pressing ahead.
The exchange has opened a broader argument about how far court business may run through the vacation, and the Attorney-General’s Department has entered it on the side of the courts.
Deputy Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Dr Justice Srem-Sai has maintained that the decision on whether proceedings continue rests with the court rather than with counsel, a position that converges with the Chief Justice’s account of adjournment as a judicial act.
Two Claims, One Rulebook
The two sides are reading the same instrument and arriving at opposite conclusions. The Bar treats the vacation as a period during which trials ordinarily halt, with counsel’s availability functioning as a practical condition for any case that is listed.
The Chief Justice treats the vacation as a schedule that yields to a judge already sitting, with a lawyer’s absence a matter between that lawyer and the client.
What neither side has resolved is what happens next in the courtrooms concerned. The judges named in the warrants remain listed to sit, the firms that petitioned have said they will not attend, and the accused persons in those part-heard trials sit between the two positions.
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