judicial independence

Mar

18

2020

Judicial independence infringed when Uganda's Chief Justice has to 'plead' for funds - constitutional court

By Carmel Rickard

Uganda’s constitutional court has found that the independence of the country’s judiciary is in jeopardy because of the way the budget of this arm of government is handled. In one of its most significant decisions under the present constitution, the court said the system made the judiciary very much the junior branch in the three arms of government, and often reduced the Chief Justice ‘to pleading for funds from the executive’.

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In this landmark case the Uganda law society made an alarming claim: the country’s executive and legislature had failed to help the judicial arm of government take its rightful place under the constitution. In doing so, they undermined the independence of the judiciary.

Apr

12

2023

Conflicting principles surface in Kenyan case on judicial service commission appointments

By Carmel Rickard

Kenya’s highest court has delivered a decision that strongly defends the independence of the judiciary and, by extension, the independence of the mechanism by which judges are chosen, the Judicial Service Commission. It’s a watershed decision in that it will significantly change the way in which members of the JSC are appointed: the court said the president of the country had no function, not even a ceremonial one, in appointing and gazetting JSC members and that the role that the president had assumed in the past was a ‘fundamental contravention’ of the constitution.

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The litigation in this case was prompted by action of the country’s then president, Uhuru Kenyatta. During his terms of office, he developed a track record of conflict – sometimes escalating to seriously intense levels – over the relative powers of the executive and the judiciary.

Apr

21

2022

African Commission finds judicial dismissal by Eswatini violated African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights

By Carmel Rickard

Since 2011, Thomas Masuku has been in a kind of judicial limbo following a decision by the authorities in Eswatini to remove him from office as a judge. He was, however, welcomed with open arms in Namibia, where he serves on the high court bench. Now, in an extraordinary development, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has found that his removal from office by Eswatini violated key articles of the African Charter.

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Any reader of the decision by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the complaint by jurist Thomas Masuku is taken back in time to the era when controversial, disgraced judge, Michael Ramodibedi, was Chief Justice in Eswatini.

judicial independence