Chief Justice, Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie has urged judges and magistrates to find a balance between the heavy demands of judicial office and their lives as human beings.
According to the Chief Justice, discourse on the Judiciary is often dominated by institutional language – judgments, backlogs, efficiency and technology – while forgetting that behind every judgment is a human being.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the two-day 45th Annual Conference of the Association of Magistrates and Judges of Ghana, (AMJG), was on the theme – “Balance Beyond the Bench: Harmonising Duty, Justice and Life.”
“Behind every robe is a person with a family, friendships, responsibilities, worries, hopes and, occasionally, the simple desire to go home and have a quiet evening without somebody asking for a ruling,” he noted.
He said the judicial office demands intellectual discipline, emotional restraint and the capacity to carry the burdens of other people’s disputes without being consumed, stressing that a person’s liberty, family home, business or child’s future may depend on a judge’s ruling.
Reflecting on his own experience, the Chief Justice admitted that he has faced challenges for allowing his personal side to show.
“I have, in recent times, run into some trouble in this office precisely because I allowed my humanity to overtake my official restraint,” he said, citing his attendance at public events to honour close friends and relatives and official engagements as Chair of the Council for Legal Education and Training where, he said, “perhaps the safer course would have been to remain behind the walls of the office.”
But he insisted that judges must never abandon their humanity because of office.
“The robe may require restraint, discipline and distance, but it must never require us to cease being human. The challenge is not to choose between being a judge and being a person; it is to learn how to be both, without allowing one to compromise the other,” he stressed.
The balance we speak of
On the theme of balance, Justice Baffoe-Bonnie clarified that balance does not mean doing less work. He said duty is better discharged by a person who is not permanently exhausted or isolated.
He invoked the old wisdom that “one cannot pour from an empty vessel,” arguing that the Judiciary needs judges who are intellectually alive, emotionally grounded and physically capable.
“We must therefore create a judicial culture in which excellence is expected, but humanity is not regarded as weakness,” he said.
“A judge can be committed to the work and still love his family. A magistrate can take the administration of justice seriously and still find time to laugh. A judicial officer can work hard without believing that exhaustion is itself evidence of dedication.”
He added that taking care of oneself is not indulgence when the institution requires one’s best judgment.
Duty and the human being
The Chief Justice however cautioned that balance must never become an excuse for indifference to duty.
“The litigant who has waited for years cannot be told that the case has been delayed because the judge is seeking balance. The accused person whose liberty is at stake cannot be asked to understand that the court is having a difficult week,” he said.
He reminded judges that the citizen does not encounter the Judiciary as an abstract institution, but encounters a particular judge, a particular courtroom and a particular decision.
While calling for care for judicial officers, he said the needs of those for whom justice is administered must not be forgotten, noting that “A Judiciary that cares for its judicial officers is better positioned to serve the public.”
Life outside the robe
Justice Baffoe-Bonnie also spoke about life beyond the courtroom, urging judges to cherish their roles as spouses, parents, siblings and friends.
“Sometimes the best antidote to the solemnity of judicial office is to return home and be reminded that one is simply somebody’s grandpa, grandma, father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister or friend,” he said.
He warned judges not to wait until retirement to discover they spent their entire lives serving an institution while neglecting family.
“The Judiciary needs our best years, but our families deserve some of them too,” he added.
A word to AMJG
Commending the Association for the theme, the Chief Justice said an association of judicial officers must do more than negotiate conditions of service, but must help cultivate a profession where members can remain excellent judges without ceasing to be whole human beings.
He said the welfare of judges has implications for judicial independence, integrity and quality of justice, but said welfare must be accompanied by responsibility.
“We must demand good conditions, but we must also demand good performance. We must insist upon institutional support, but we must also insist upon institutional discipline. We must defend judicial independence, while remembering that independence is not freedom from accountability,” he stated.
Conclusion
Concluding, Chief Justice Baffoe-Bonnie summed up the theme in one line:
“We must learn to be judges without forgetting that we are human beings, and we must remain human beings without forgetting that we are judges.”
He urged the conference to deliberate honestly on how to build a Judiciary “that is efficient without becoming mechanical; demanding without becoming inhuman; modern without losing its soul; and rigorous without losing its sense of compassion.”
“At the end of the day, justice is administered by human beings. And perhaps the better we understand the human being behind the robe, the better we shall understand the justice we are called upon to administer,” he said.
