ABSTRACT

This paper explores the contentions surrounding the legal reasoning in the judicial review of Ghana’s 2012 presidential election petition and its electoral and legal implications. Due to the political nature of the electoral petition, the judiciary is dragged into the ‘live wire’ of electoral politics, which brings their credibility and legitimacy into question. This study argues that the adversarial nature of judicial review makes it more likely for defeated political actors to impugn political bias in the administration of electoral justice, instead of adhering to the higher constitutional principles of popular sovereignty and natural justice. Based on content analyses of the different principles and interpretive methods underpinning the adjudication of the election petition, it distils some implications for the direction of judicial reforms and the emerging electoral jurisprudence. The paper demonstrates that the excessive executive powers in the appointment of procedures of judges’ revealed major cracks in the practice of judicial review. In sum, this study makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution to the current debates on the role of constitutional courts in the consolidation of democratic governance in African states.

摘要

本文探讨了围绕加纳 2012 年总统选举请愿书司法审查中法律推理的争论及其选举和法律影响。由于选举请愿的政治性质，司法机构被拖入选举政治的“火线”，使其可信度和合法性受到质疑。本研究认为，司法审查的对抗性使得被击败的政治行为者更有可能在选举正义的管理中指责政治偏见，而不是坚持人民主权和自然正义的更高宪法原则。基于对选举申请裁决的不同原则和解释方法的内容分析，它对司法改革的方向和新兴的选举判例产生了一些影响。文章论证了法官任命程序中行政权力过大，暴露了司法审查实践中的重大漏洞。总之，这项研究对当前关于宪法法院在巩固非洲国家民主治理中的作用的辩论做出了重要的理论和实证贡献。