Coloniality of Legal Thought: The $18 Million Anas Case and the Enduring Western Hegemony in Judicial Perception

The recent defamation case in which investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas was awarded $18 million in the United States has reignited a troubling pattern in Ghanaian debate on the subject matter. One that pits the Ghanaian judicial system against its Western counterparts with uncritical glorification of Western legal institutions at the expense of our own. The conversation surrounding this case has exposed a persistent epistemic bias: the tendency to perceive the Ghanaian judicial system as weak, corrupt, and incapable of delivering justice while portraying Western legal frameworks as inherently superior. This phenomenon is not accidental but a product of what decolonial scholars call the coloniality of knowledge and power, that is, the continued dominance of Eurocentric epistemologies and institutional arrangements in postcolonial societies.

To understand this phenomenon, we must distinguish between colonialism and coloniality. Colonialism refers to the historical process of territorial conquest and political domination by European powers. However, even after formal decolonization, coloniality persists as an enduring structure that governs knowledge, power, and being in the Global South. As Achille Mbembe, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo argue, coloniality is not just about economic dependency but about the hierarchization of knowledge systems, where Western epistemes, including legal frameworks, are positioned as the gold standard while indigenous or alternative systems are relegated to inferiority.

The perception that Ghana's judicial system is inherently flawed while the American system represents fairness is a clear manifestation of epistemic colonialism which amounts to the uncritical adoption of Western models as the ultimate reference point. This belief is not based on a rigorous comparative analysis of judicial effectiveness but on the internalization of Eurocentric norms, which present Western institutions as universal while depicting postcolonial institutions as backward and corrupt.

The Jury System and Its Epistemic Fallibility

One of the core elements of this discussion is the U.S. jury system, which is often romanticized as a mechanism for ensuring fairness and public participation in justice. The jury system relies on ordinary citizens tasked with making decisions in both civil and criminal cases. Unlike professional judges trained in law, juries are made up of individuals who may not always have the legal expertise necessary to interpret complex cases. However, as critical legal scholars have noted, juries do not necessarily arrive at more just outcomes; rather, they introduce a different form of bias, one rooted in affective populism rather than legal objectivity. Jury decisions are often influenced by emotions, media portrayals and narratives, public sentiment, and the rhetorical skill and persuasive abilities of lawyers rather than strict legal reasoning. This explains why the U.S. system frequently produces excessive punitive damages, often running into millions or even billions of dollars.

This is particularly evident in civil cases, where juries frequently award astronomical sums in damages. In defamation cases, juries tend to punish defendants they perceive as powerful or unethical, rather than strictly applying legal standards of harm and compensation. The U.S. has seen many such verdicts, including cases where companies and public figures have been ordered to pay hundreds of millions in damages, often reduced later by appellate courts. The point is that these decisions are not necessarily driven by objective legal reasoning but by social and political undercurrents.

In Anas's case, the jury decided that he had suffered significant harm due to the defamatory statements made against him by Hon. Ken Agyapong. However, the award of $18 million to Anas should be critically examined, not celebrated uncritically. But does the amount of $18 million truly reflect the damage done? What losses did he incur that warrant such an astronomical sum? Was his life threatened, his career irreparably damaged, or his financial standing destroyed? What rational legal criteria justified this amount? Was the harm done to Anas quantifiable in monetary terms to that extent? Or was this a case of jurors responding emotionally rather than objectively, as frequently happens in the U.S. legal system? If a Ghanaian court had awarded a similar sum, would we not have immediately dismissed it as corrupt and irrational? These questions expose the selective application of epistemic trust, where Western verdicts are accepted at face value while Ghanaian decisions are treated with suspicion.

While some argue that Ghanaian courts tend to favour the rich and powerful, it is worth questioning whether the U.S. system is truly fair when it awards disproportionate damages based on subjective assessments rather than objective harm. For those who support the judgment simply because they sympathize with Anas, it is worth asking: would you feel the same if the roles were reversed? If a Ghanaian journalist were forced to pay $18 million to a powerful politician, would you still call it justice? Or would you argue that the system was rigged in favour of the elite?

Western Legal Hegemony and the Criminalization of African Legal Epistemologies

One of the deeper problems with the coloniality of legal thought is how it has delegitimized indigenous African approaches to justice. Pre-colonial African societies had their own sophisticated systems of dispute resolution, many of which prioritized restorative justice over punitive measures. The colonial legal imposition replaced these systems with adversarial court structures modelled on European jurisprudence, entrenching the notion that "real justice" must follow the template of British common law or the U.S. legal system.

This explains why many Ghanaians instinctively trust a foreign court's judgment over their own institutions. We have been conditioned to believe that Western legal epistemologies are rational and neutral, while African judicial traditions (and their postcolonial iterations) are seen as flawed and inadequate. This juridical dependency syndrome is part of the broader colonial matrix of power, where not only are our economies and governance structures shaped by Western paradigms, but even our fundamental understandings of justice and legitimacy remain tethered to Eurocentric validation.

The Political Economy of Legal Verdicts

It is also important to interrogate the political economy of justice in cases like Anas's. The U.S. legal system is not inherently designed to uphold moral truth. It is deeply embedded in a capitalist framework where justice is often commodified or valorised. The high cost of legal representation means that those who can afford top-tier lawyers often secure more favourable outcomes, regardless of the merits of their case. This system, far from being a beacon of fairness, replicates class-based inequities under the guise of legal neutrality.

In Ghana, we often criticize our judiciary for favouring the rich. But what, then, do we make of a legal system where multimillion-dollar compensations are routinely awarded based on subjective jury decisions? If a Ghanaian journalist had been awarded $18 million in Ghana, many would have dismissed it as a case of judicial corruption. Yet, when the same happens in the U.S., it is accepted as legitimate. This is the epistemic contradiction of coloniality, the assumption that justice is valid only when it follows Western templates.

Beyond Colonial Legal Epistemes: Towards Cognitive Justice

The Anas case should not just be about whether one supports him or Ken Agyapong. It should serve as a moment of reflection on how deeply entrenched coloniality remains in our legal consciousness. We must recognize that no legal system is perfect, and we must resist the fetishization of Western juridical models as inherently superior. This requires an epistemic decolonization, one that not only critiques the flaws of our own system but also questions the assumed infallibility of Western justice.

The decolonial alternative is not to reject Western legal principles wholesale but to develop pluriversal approaches - legal frameworks that incorporate Indigenous African legal traditions, emphasize restorative justice, and adapt global best practices to local contexts rather than uncritically adopting them. It is only by engaging in this epistemic liberation that we can build a justice system that is not only functional but also reflective of our historical and socio-political realities.

Rethinking Justice Beyond the West/Legal Sovereignty

The Anas verdict is not just about legal outcomes, it is about the broader structures of knowledge and power that shape our perception of justice. As Ghanaians, we must ask ourselves: Are we truly committed to justice, or are we merely reproducing colonial hierarchies in legal thought? Do we seek fairness, or do we simply want the West to validate our struggles?

If we continue to view our own legal institutions as inherently defective while accepting every Western verdict as gospel, we will remain trapped in a cycle of epistemic dependency, one where our sovereignty is not just politically compromised but intellectually subordinated. Justice should not be about where a verdict is delivered but about the principles that underlie it. Only when we begin to trust our own epistemic frameworks can we build a legal system that is truly just, rather than one that merely mimics Western forms without substance.

As we debate this case, let us move beyond the colonial mindset that assumes Western justice is the ideal and instead ask deeper questions: What does true justice look like? How do we ensure fairness in our legal system? And most importantly, how can we build confidence in our own institutions rather than always looking to the West for validation?

My 2 Pesewas

James McKeown
Helsinki, Finland
[email protected]
[email protected]