Day 1: the Commercial Court and the Ghanaian legal system

The first day of my internship started inauspiciously, with torrential rain and a no-show by my taxi driver. Despite these setbacks, I managed - thanks to a lift from my host Odette - to reach the centre of Accra in good time. I briefly visited the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (more of which tomorrow) but most of the day was spent with the law firm Sam Okudzeto and Associates, with whom my internship was organised.

In late morning I was taken to the Commercial Court with two of the lawyers from the firm to attend a pre-trial settlement conference. As this was the fifth pre-trial settlement meeting, I suspected that the chances of actually settling would not be high, but progress was in fact made. Although initially I was struck by the similarities between the Ghanaian system and the English/Welsh one, the differences grew more striking the more time I spent at court. Statements of case seem, for example, to be at once more emotively worded and more archaically phrased. Moreover, the essence of the case itself - a question of to whom legal fees should be paid - would be unlikely to arise in English law. I was also struck by the frankness of the signage in the court building, best illustrated by the posters warning visitors not to offer bribes to court staff.

After lunch at the British Council (the menu was local; the prices were not) with the firm's current pupil, Melisa, I returned to the office and spent most of the remainder of the afternoon reading up on Ghanaian law. In Ghana, there exists a dual system of law wherein the received English common law and equitable doctrines co-exist with local, customary laws. The interaction of these two sources of law is perhaps best illustrated in the institution of marriage, of which there are two types in Ghana. The first, "legal marriage", is formalised through a ceremony in a registry office. It is bound by familiar rules such as no polygamy and can be dissolved by divorce. The second, "customary marriage", is formalised through some sort of exchange (of kola nuts in the Kossena area, for example, and drinks in the Akan tribe) and, for the man, can be polygamous. Both forms are equally valid types of marriage although, as Melisa explained, customary marriage is increasingly undertaken as an engagement preceding a legal marriage.

I also found civil procedure to be an unexpected source of interest. The Civil Procedure Rules are, to anyone not familiar with them, a set of rules governing how civil cases are to be conducted. They can at best be described as dry. It was therefore something of a surprise to read in the Ghanaian High Court Civil Procedure Rules, in the midst of the familiar injunctions on multi-party actions and default judgment, that "the occupant of a stool or skin...may sue and be sued on behalf of or as representing the stool or skin", (the occupant of a stool or skin being the chief of a tribe). A little later on came the rule detailing how to serve documents on a chief, an issue which I doubt was considered by Lord Woolf in drawing up his reforms.

A fascinating start to the internship - it was just a shame that the taxi broke down on the way home.