Do Tribunals Undermine Ghanaian Judicial Integrity?

Abstract
The judiciary is the only body with judicial authority under Ghana's 1992 Constitution. However, in order to improve access to justice and reduce court backlogs, constitutional provisions like Articles 125(2), 126, and 142 also allow for statutory, regional, and lesser tribunals.2 Despite these legal underpinnings, the continued growth and revival of statutory tribunals most notably the enactment of the contentious Tribunals Bill, 2026 have rekindled heated discussions about executive intrusion, parallel legal systems, and the possible deterioration of judicial integrity among legal experts, labour unions, and political figures. This study offers an institutional and empirical evaluation of Ghana's tribunal system in three key areas:

An examination of the PNDC Public Tribunals (1982–1993) demonstrates that parallel adjudicative structures insulated from ordinary appellate review and subject to executive appointments produce severe integrity harms, including loss of due process and wrongful convictions, which necessitated their eventual reintegration under the Courts Act, 1993 (Act 459).

Analysis of Articles 125, 126, 142, and Article 146 removal proceedings confirms that tribunals are not foreign to Ghana's constitutional order, provided executive discretion is appropriately constrained.

An assessment of the 2026 Bill reveals a middle-ground risk profile while establishing the importance of safeguarding such as Judicial Council oversight, jurisdictional prohibitions on constitutional and human rights matters, and appellate links it introduces potential channels for political influence through presidential appointments of tribunal chairs and subnational appointments of panel members.

The study concludes that tribunals are not inherently detrimental to judicial integrity. Across all cases evaluated, the single most consistent predictor of whether a tribunal mechanism protects or undermines judicial integrity is whether its decisions remain strictly subordinate to independent appellate oversight by the ordinary superior courts. Ultimately, the long-term impact of the 20 Bill will depend on practical implementation, jurisdictional boundaries, and maintaining non-partisan appointment standards.

1. Introduction and Scope

Under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, judicial power is vested in the Judiciary only, emanating from the sovereign power of the people of Ghana. This is therefore established in Article 125(1) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, and it states that justice must be administered strictly in accordance with the constitutional values, while Article 126(1) of the Constitution also provides the constitutional framework for which the incorporation of the Regional Tribunals and lower adjudicatory bodies must be put in place.

However, serious institutional and empirical concerns from scholars about judicial integrity, structural independence, and the rule of law are brought up by the growth and resurgence of statutory tribunals. In the past, the Public Tribunals of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) era and other non-traditional adjudicatory venues left a legacy of popular suspicion about executive intrusion and parallel legal systems. Legislative initiatives such as the proposed Tribunals Bill in Ghana have sparked a heated debate among trade unions, civil society organisations, and legal scholars about whether tribunal frameworks improve judicial efficiency or systematically undermine the traditional judicial architecture.

Critics argue that directing financial and human resources toward the establishment or operation of tribunals takes vital funds away from a regular court system that is underfunded and dealing with issues including case delays, judicial vacancies, and inadequate infrastructure. Additionally, there are still worries that panel-based adjudication, executive involvement in appointments, and informal tribunal procedures could undermine public confidence and jeopardise the procedural due process provided by Article 23. On the other hand, supporters argue that properly established administrative tribunals improve access to prompt justice and relieve overburdened court dockets without usurping the Supreme Court's and High Courts' supervisory power.

Although constitutional doctrinal analysis and supervisory judicial review have historically been the main focus of legal scholarship on Ghanaian administrative law, there is still a crucial empirical gap concerning the actual operations of tribunals. There is a dearth of empirical research that

systematically assesses how litigants, attorneys, and adjudicators view tribunal independence or whether these entities bolster or erode public trust in the legal system.

2. Historical Precedent: The PNDC Public Tribunals (1982–1993)

Ghana's own recent history provides the most factual evidence that tribunals can compromise judicial integrity. Public Tribunals National, Regional, District, and Community tiers were established by the PNDC in August 1982 as a criminal justice system that operated concurrently with, and administratively apart from, the regular courts, which were administered by the Judicial Service, while the tribunals were run by a distinct Board of Public Tribunals.

Instead of the independent Judicial Council method used for regular judges, tribunal chairmen and panel members were nominated through PNDC and, later, executive channels.

• The foundation law which was the PNDCL 24, subsequently PNDCL 78 specifically exempted tribunals from many of the technical evidence procedures that apply to regular courts, allowing them to convict based on the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness.
• No cross-appeals existed between the tribunal system and the ordinary courts; each operated as a self-contained hierarchy, which blocked the ordinary judiciary's supervisory role over tribunal decisions.
• The system's lack of due process was symbolised by documented miscarriages, such as the Nii Amoo Addy case, and worldwide condemnation, especially from Amnesty International regarding incarceration without trial.16
• The Ghana Bar Association was a leading institutional critic of the tribunals throughout the 1980s, objecting specifically to their insulation from ordinary judicial oversight.

The Courts Act, 1993 (Act 459), which merged the tribunals into the normal judicial hierarchy under the Chief Justice's jurisdiction and transformed the former Public Tribunals into Circuit and

Community Tribunals with the same appeal system as the regular courts, marked the beginning of reintegration. Because the pre-1993 parallel system was seen as irreconcilable with an independent judiciary, scholarship on this shift views the 1993 reform as a purposeful act of judicial reintegration.19 Almost all opponents of the 2026 Tribunals Bill directly allude to this history.

3. Constitutional Framework

As provided earlier in the introduction, Article 125(2) of the 1992 Constitution states that citizens participate in the administration of justice through public and customary tribunals and the jury and assessor systems, meaning tribunals are not, in any form or principle, alien to Ghana's constitutional design.

A petition to the President, a prima facie determination, and, if necessary, a committee of inquiry whose recommendation binds the President under Article 146(9), are the only ways in which a Justice of the Superior Court or a Chairman of a Regional Tribunal may be removed for specified misbehaviour, incompetence, or infirmity of body or mind.

Additionally, specialised tribunal-class bodies within the judicial architecture are anticipated under Articles 126 and 142.22 Therefore, the constitutional text provides a path for both removal tribunals and lower-tier public tribunals to function lawfully. However, it gives the executive's appointment and referral powers, as well as the implementation of legislation, a great deal of discretion in determining whether a tribunal actually strengthens or weakens judicial integrity.

4. The Tribunals Bill, 2026: A Live Controversy

Ghana, as of 20 July 2026, is in the midst of a fresh, unresolved dispute over questions related to tribunals that directly engages judicial integrity. Understanding it requires separating what is settled from what remains contested.

4.1 What the Bill Does

• Introduced by Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Dr Dominic Ayine, laid before Parliament on 26 June 2026.23
• Creates a two-tier structure of Regional and District Tribunals with specialised jurisdiction over economic, environmental, and other legislatively assigned matters, intended to relieve case backlogs in the ordinary courts.
• It prohibits tribunals from making decisions on constitutional interpretation, human rights abuses, or subjects that are constitutionally reserved for the Superior Courts. It also establishes a Tribunal Oversight Committee that operates under the Judicial Council.
• Tribunal chairpersons are to be appointed by the President, while panel members are appointed by Regional Coordinating Councils and District Assemblies a bifurcated appointment structure that is itself a central point of controversy (see 4.2).
• After the Minority Caucus staged a walkout, the bill was passed by Parliament on 17 July 2026, after the customary one-day gap between its deliberation stage and its third reading was waived.

4.2 Grounds for Concern

Through the Trades Union Congress, organised labour publicly opposed the Bill, claiming that the presidential appointment of tribunal chairpersons along with the subnational appointment of panel members could create a conduit for executive and local political influence over tribunal composition. They also called for the Bill to be withdrawn until the ongoing constitutional review process was finished.

In an appeal to President Mahama on 19 July 2026, former Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia asked that assent be withheld and that the President instead hold consultations under Articles 90 and 106 through the Council of State, involving the Ghana Bar Association, labour, civil society, and political parties.The former Vice President described the legislative process as having proceeded on “a headcount” rather than national consensus.Legal observers have specifically cited the Public Tribunals of the PNDC era as the pertinent cautionary example, pointing out that the previous system was criticised for acting more as a tool of persecution than prosecution due to its lack of judicial independence.

4.3 Grounds for Reassurance

Government and some sitting judicial officers argue that the 2026 Bill differs materially from its PNDC-era predecessor in institutional design. Unlike the 1980s tribunals, the new bodies are placed under Judicial Council oversight rather than a separate executive-controlled board; they are explicitly barred from constitutional and human-rights adjudication; and they operate within a mature constitutional order that includes an independent Supreme Court, established appellate rights, and an active legal profession safeguards that did not exist in 1982.31 Proponents frame the Bill as an overdue operationalisation of Articles 125(2), 126, and 142, intended to expand access to justice and relieve documented court backlogs rather than to create a parallel political court.

Because the Bill had not yet received presidential assent as of this writing, and no tribunal chairperson had yet been appointed under it, its actual effect on judicial integrity cannot yet be measured empirically. The dispute at this stage is a dispute about institutional design risk rather than about demonstrated harm.

5. Analytical Synthesis: Do Tribunals Undermine Judicial Integrity?

5.1 Where integrity is most at risk

The clearest historical finding is that parallel adjudicative structures insulated from ordinary judicial appellate review the defining feature of the 1980s Public Tribunals produce the most severe and well-documented integrity harms: wrongful convictions, loss of due process, and international condemnation. The clearest live risk in 2026 is the bifurcated appointment mechanism for the new tribunals, which recreates, in a milder form, a channel of executive and local-political influence over adjudicators that the 1993 reintegration was specifically designed to close. The clearest ongoing risk in the Article 146 context is not the mechanism's constitutionality but its procedural opacity and vulnerability to partisan framing, which erodes perceived legitimacy even where the process is substantively followed.

5.2 Where integrity is better protected

Two features consistently correlate with better integrity outcomes across the cases studied: subordination to the ordinary judicial hierarchy for appeal and oversight (present in the 1993 reintegration and nominally present in both Article 146 and the 2026 Bill, absent in the pre-1993 tribunals), and binding, evidence-based decision rules that constrain executive discretion (Article 146(9)'s requirement that the President act on the Committee's recommendation, rather than exercise independent judgment, is illustrative).

6. Conclusions

The 1992 Constitution itself recognises tribunals, and Article 146 removal committees have functioned within a recognised due-process framework that includes cross-examination, documentary review, and binding constitutional consequences. Therefore, tribunals are not inherently detrimental to judicial integrity.

• Ghana's own history provides the clearest evidence that tribunals can undermine judicial integrity when they are structurally parallel to, and insulated from, the ordinary courts, as the 1982–93 Public Tribunals were.
• The 2026 Tribunals Bill falls into an intermediate risk category whose actual impact on integrity cannot yet be empirically evaluated because it replicates some aspects of the previous model (executive appointment of chairs) while specifically avoiding others (jurisdictional limits, Judicial Council linkage).
• Independent survey data show that Ghana's judiciary carries a substantial pre-existing legitimacy deficit, meaning tribunal controversies are amplified by, rather than the sole source of, declining public confidence.
• The single most consistent predictor of whether a tribunal mechanism protects or undermines judicial integrity, across all three cases examined, is whether its decisions remain subject to independent appellate oversight by the ordinary superior courts.

Fundamentally, Ghana's tribunal debate is not about the merits of speciality or accountability tribunals per se, but rather about institutional design protections. The evidence gathered here indicates that the 2026 Bill's final impact on judicial integrity will depend more on whether its jurisdictional boundaries and Judicial Council oversight are upheld in practice, and whether tribunal chair appointments are perceived as being made on professional rather than partisan grounds questions that can only be answered by ongoing implementation monitoring.

   Comments0