[2012]DLSC2634 • July 4, 2012 • Supreme Court •
THE REPUBLIC vs. HIGH COURT, ACCRA EX-PARTE; ATTORNEY GENERAL
The Attorney General initiated criminal proceedings against the interested party in the High Court, Accra, following the District Court's declination of jurisdiction. The High Court assumed jurisdiction, took the accused's plea, and granted bail. Subsequently, the Attorney General applied to the Supreme Court to quash the High Court proceedings on grounds of lack of jurisdiction and improper granting of bail.
read moreDR DATE-BAH JSC: This is the unanimous ruling of the Court. The remedy of certiorari has always been a discretionary one. The authors of De Smith, Woolf & Jowell’s Principles of Judicial Review (1999), in discussing the historical development of judicial review remedies and procedures, make the following pronouncement (at p. 530) in relation to the four prerogative writs of certiorari, mandamus, prohibition, and habeas corpus: “Though the four writs had acquired their “prerogative” characteristics by the middle of the seventeenth century, strangely it was not until a century later, in 1759, that anybody (Mansfield) seems to have thought of classifying the writs as a group. Those shared characteristics included the following: 1) They were not writs of course which could be purchased by or on behalf of any applicant from the Royal Chancery; they could not be had for the asking, but proper cause had to be shown to the satisfaction of the court why they should issue. 2) Th...