2012
SUPREME COURT
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
This case concerned a constitutional challenge to provisions disqualifying dual citizens from holding certain public offices in Ghana. The Supreme Court upheld most of the challenged provisions as constitutional, finding they did not violate equality rights, dignity, or political participation rights. However, the Court struck down the provision allowing a Minister to prescribe additional disqualified offices by legislative instrument as an unconstitutional delegation of Parliament's authority. The Court also held that mandatory administrative requirements for dual citizens to obtain special documentation to exercise citizenship rights were unconstitutional, as dual citizenship rights under the Constitution are unconditional. The case clarified the constitutional status and rights of dual citizens in Ghana, balancing national interests in loyalty for certain offices against the rights of dual citizens.
ATUGUBA, J.S.C:
In modern times the courts have shed much of their conservatism in the construction of statutes. The purposive rule of construction is now the dominant rule for the construction of statutes. This in effect gives reality a triumph over dogmatic theories of law. However the ascertainment of the true purpose of a statute has to be watched so as to prevent conjectures of all sorts having an undue sway on the construction of statutes. In this connection certain rules of construction of statutes should now gain more weight than they had before. Some of them are, that, as Taylor JSC said in Mekkaoui v. Minister of Internal Affairs (1981) GLR 664 S.C. at 719: “I believe it is now trite law and there is no need to cite any authority to support it, that in all statutes, the legislature or the lawgiver is presumed to have legislated with reference to the existing state of the law.” Very similar to this view is the view that the context of the statute inclusive of its surrounding circumstances are relevant matters to its proper construction – per Lord Simmonds in Attorney-General v. Ernest Augustus (Prince) of Hanover (1957) AC 436 at 461 H.L.
Happily all this has been captured by the Memorandum to the Interpretation Act, 2009 (Act 792) as follows:
“The general rules for the construction or interpretation used by the Courts were formulated by the Judges and not enacted by Parliament. From the Mischief Rule enunciated in Heydon’s Case [1584 3 Co Rep. E.R. 637] to the Literal Rule enunciated in the Sussex Peerage Case [(1844) 11 Co & F 85; E.R. 1034], to the Golden Rule enunciated in Grey v. Pearson [(1857) 6 H.L. C. 61; 10 E.R. 1216] the courts in the Commonwealth have now moved to the Purposive Approach to the interpretation of legislation and indeed of all written instruments. The Judges have abandoned the strict constructionist view of interpretation in favour of the true purpose of legislation.
The Purposive Approach to interpretation takes account of the words of the Act according to their ordinary meaning as well as the context in which the words are used. Reliance is not placed solely on the linguistic context, but consideration is given to the subject-matter, the scope, the purpose and, to some extent, the background. Thus with the Purposive Approach to the interpretation of legislation there is no concentration on language to the exclusion of the context. The aim, ultimately, is one of synthesis. …
Clause (2) of article 1 of the Cons