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JUDGMENT
AMEGATCHER, JSC:-
Dynamic Youth Movement of Ghana is an incorporated person registered under the laws
of Ghana with the object of empowering the youth of Ghana through education, training
2(1) and 130 of the Constitution, 1992. The constitutional provision vested persons the
right to invoke the original jurisdiction of this court to seek an interpretation to or
enforcement of any provisions of the Constitution. This writ is part of myriads of writs
which the Supreme Court had been inundated with of late from individual and corporate
bodies seeking to test the legality or otherwise of acts or omission of constitutional and
administrative bodies and public office holders which they perceived to be inconsistent
with or a contravention of provisions of the Constitution. Interestingly the predecessor
constitution of 1979 also suffered from the same thirst. Some of these writs have played
no mean role in shaping the jurisprudence of this court and extending the frontiers of
constitutional law in this jurisdiction. Others, however, did not meet this test.
To the latter, provoked the formulation of a roadmap by the then Court of Appeal
performing the functions of the Supreme Court some forty years ago to guide parties and
practitioners think through the issues before them thoroughly before appearing in the
apex court to seek an interpretation. That was the case of Republic v. Special
Tribunal; Ex parte Akosah [1980] GLR 592. In that case, the roadmap was set out
for triggering the interpretative jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under the 1979
Constitution. At page 605 Anin JA speaking on behalf of the court stated that the original,
interpretative jurisdiction of the Supreme Court would be invoked where under the
following:
“(a) the words of the provision are imprecise or unclear or ambiguous. Put in
another way, it arises if one party invites the court to declare that the words
of the article have a double-meaning or are obscure or else mean something
different from or more than what they say;
(b) rival meanings have been placed by the litigants on the words of any
provision of the Constitution;
(d) on the face of the provisions, there is a conflict between the operation of
particular institutions set up under the Constitution, and thereby raising
problems of enforcement and of interpretation.”
Since the formulation of this roadmap, this court have reformulated and reechoed the
circumstances under which its interpretative jurisd