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Governance, Human Rights, and Political Transformation in Africa pp 117–147Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Transcending Dualism: Deconstructing Colonial Vestiges in Ghana’s Treaty Law and Practice

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Abstract

In line with its common law heritage, Ghana identifies as a dualist state. It follows that when Ghana ratifies a treaty, it must incorporate the treaty in order for the treaty to be domestically inapplicable. However, Ghana is more dualist in pronouncement than in practice; rendering rights-conferring treaties including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights inapplicable or uncertain within Ghana law. Drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law, this chapter makes three propositions: that the monist–dualist divide is blurred as there is a progressive effort at transcending this divide; that Ghana’s mechanistic and continual observance of dualism is to be beholden to colonial legacies that ill-serve its interests; and, that the purpose of rights-conferring treaties can only be realised through a proactive approach by the courts, and the complementary, joint effort of the Executive and Parliament to domesticate these treaties.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    21 I.L.M. 58 (1982) [Hereinafter the African Charter or the Charter]; Ghana deposited its instrument of ratification on March 1, 1989.

  2. 2.

    Melissa Walters, “Creeping Monism: The Judicial Trend Toward Interpretive Incorporation of Human Rights Treaties,” Columbia Law Review 107 (2007): 643.

  3. 3.

    David Sloss, “Domestic Application of Treaties,” in The Oxford Guide to Treaties, ed. Duncan Hollis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 367.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 373.

  5. 5.

    P.F. Gonidec, “Relationship Between International Law and National Law in Africa,” African Journal of International and Comparative Law 10 (1998): 245.

  6. 6.

    Boleslaw Boczek, International Law: A Dictionary, vol. 2 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 6; Martin Dixon, Textbook on International Law, 3rd ed. (London: Blackstone Press, 1996), 65.

  7. 7.

    Edwin Borchard, “The Relationship Between International Law and Municipal Law,” Virginia Law Review 27, no. 2 (1940): 137.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 139.

  9. 9.

    W.B. Stern, “Kelsen’s Theory of International Law,” American Political Science Review 30, no. 4 (1936): 737.

  10. 10.

    Jordan Paust, “Basic Forms of International Law and Monist, Dualist, and Realist Perspectives,” in Basic Concepts of International Law: Monism and Dualism, ed. Marko Novakovic (Belgrade: University of Belgrade, 2013), 246.

  11. 11.

    Malcolm Shaw, International Law, 5th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 135–136.

  12. 12.

    Heinrich Triepel, “Les Rapports entre Le Droit Interne et Le Droit International,” Recueil des Cours 1 (1923): 77.

  13. 13.

    Jan Klabbers, International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 289.

  14. 14.

    Paust, “Basic Forms,” 247–248.

  15. 15.

    Ibid.

  16. 16.

    Robert Stewart, “Treaty-Making Procedure in the United Kingdom,” American Political Science Review 32, no. 4 (1938): 655.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 659.

  18. 18.

    Jill Barrett, “The United Kingdom and Parliamentary Scrutiny of Treaties: Recent Reforms,” International Comparative Law Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2011): 228; Arabella Lang, “Parliament’s Role in Ratifying Treaties,” House of Commons Briefing Paper 5855 (2017): 3–4. The UK’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, 2010 (CRGA) affirmed the Executive’s treaty-making powers by clarifying the Ponsonby Rule. Under the Ponsonby Rule, the Executive laid treaties before Parliament for 21 “sitting days” prior to ratification. Parliament could debate the treaty, but neither the debate nor its outcome was binding on the Executive. Today, the CRGA gives statutory backing to this rule which, previously, was merely a convention.

  19. 19.

    Stewart, “Treaty-Making Procedure,” 666.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 666.

  21. 21.

    John Jackson, “Status of Treaties in Domestic Legal Systems,” American Journal of International Law 86, no. 2 (1992): 315; Joseph Chitty, A Treatise on the Law of the of the Prerogatives of the Crown: And the Relative Duties and Rights of the Subject (London: J. Butterworth and Son, 1820), 3–4.

  22. 22.

    Stewart, “Treaty-Making Procedure,” 666.

  23. 23.

    Attorney-General for Canada v. Attorney-General for Ontario, A.C. 326 (1937).

  24. 24.

    Kenneth Twitchett, “Colonialism: An Attempt at Understanding Imperial, Colonial and Neo-colonial Relationships,” Political Studies 13, no. 3 (1965): 319.

  25. 25.

    Emmanuel Quansah, “An Examination of the Use of International Law as an Interpretative Tool in Human Rights Litigation in Ghana and Botswana,” in International Law and Human Rights Litigation in Africa, ed. Magnus Killander (Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2010), 37–38.

  26. 26.

    Sloss, “Domestic Application of Treaties,” 373.

  27. 27.

    Walters, “Creeping Monism”, 652; Lang, “Parliament’s Role,” 20.

  28. 28.

    Richard Oppong, “Re-imagining International Law: An Examination of Recent Trends in the Reception of International Law into National Legal Systems in Africa,” Fordham International Law Journal 30, no. 2 (2006): 298.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    David Kennedy, “Sources of International Law,” American University Law Review 2, no. 1 (1987): 8–10.

  31. 31.

    Mirna Adjami, “African Courts, International Law, and Comparative Case Law: Chimera or Emerging Human Rights Jurisprudence,” Michigan International Law Journal 24 (2002–2003): 109; Ernest Yaw Ako and Richard Frimpong Oppong, “Foreign Relations Law in the Constitutions and Courts of Commonwealth African Countries,” in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, ed. Curtis A. Bradley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 586–591, argue that there are variations within Africa as some common law states have altered their dualist heritage to take the form of a monist-like approach, either by judicial practice, statutory change or constitutional intervention.

  32. 32.

    Christian Okeke, “The Use of International Law in the Domestic Courts of Ghana and Nigeria,” Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law 32, no. 2 (2015): 395; Gib van Ert, “The Domestic Applicability of International Law in Canada,” in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, ed. Curtis A. Bradley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 510, argues that the reception of customary international law in dualist states “is a significantly monist element in a system too often depicted as dualist.”

  33. 33.

    Andre Ferreira et al., “Formation and Evidence of Customary International Law,” UFRGS Model United Nations Journal 1 (2013): 185.

  34. 34.

    Tijanyawa Maluwa, “Ratification of African Union Treaties by Member States: Law, Policy and Practice,” Melbourne Journal of International Law 13, no. 2 (2012): 7.

  35. 35.

    African Charter, art. 1.

  36. 36.

    Maluwa, “Ratification of African Union Treaties,” 8.

  37. 37.

    African Charter, art. 62.

  38. 38.

    Adjami, “African Courts,” 111; African Charter, arts. 1 and 62.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 110.

  40. 40.

    African Charter, art. 1.

  41. 41.

    Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1155 U.N.T.S. 331 [hereinafter VCLT], art. 27.

  42. 42.

    Adjami, “African Courts,” 110.

  43. 43.

    VCLT, art. 18.

  44. 44.

    William Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957–1966: Diplomacy Ideology, and the New State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), xvii.

  45. 45.

    Francis Bennion, Constitutional Law of Ghana (London: Butterworths, 1962), 259.

  46. 46.

    Stanley de Smith, “The Independence of Ghana,” Modern Law Review 20 (1957): 351–352.

  47. 47.

    Victor Essien, “Ghana,” in Sources of State Practice in International Law, ed. Ralph Gaebler and Alison Shea, 2nd revised ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 254.

  48. 48.

    Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua, “Ghana at 50: The Place of International Human Rights Norms in Ghana’s Courts,” in Ghana Law Since Independence: History, Development and Prospects, ed. Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu et al. (Accra: Black Mask, 2007), 184.

  49. 49.

    Emmanuel Benneh, “The Sources of Public International Law and Their Applicability to the Domestic Law in Ghana,” University of Ghana Law Journal 26 (2013): 91.

  50. 50.

    Armon v. Katz 2 G.L.R. 115 (1976), 123.

  51. 51.

    A.K.P. Kludze, “Constitutional Rights and Their Relationship with International Human Rights in Ghana,” Israel Law Review 41, no. 3 (2008): 679.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 681.

  53. 53.

    Ibid.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 680.

  55. 55.

    Ibid.; Carlos Vazquez, “The Four Doctrines of Self-Executing Treaties,” American Journal of International Law 89 (1995): 695; Duncan B. Hollis and Carlos M. Vasquez, “Treaty Self-Execution as “Foreign” Foreign Relations Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, ed. Curtis A. Bradley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 468.

  56. 56.

    Kludze, “Constitutional Rights,” 680.

  57. 57.

    Essien, “Ghana,” 256.

  58. 58.

    1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, art. 37(3) and art. 73 [hereinafter 1992 Constitution or the Constitution]. Office of Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice, Republic of Ghana: Treaty Manual (2009).

  59. 59.

    1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, art. 40. By extension, the reference to the OAU/AU foundational texts contemplates treaties made under the authority of this continental organisation.

  60. 60.

    Michael Nyarko, “The Impact of the African Charter and Maputo Protocol in Ghana,” in The Impact of the African Charter and Maputo Protocol in Selected African States, ed. Victor Ayeni (Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press, 2016), 99.

  61. 61.

    Tarunabh Khaitan, “Directive Principles and the Expressive Accommodation of Ideological Dissenters,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 16 (2018): 396.

  62. 62.

    Ghana Lotto Operators Association v. National Lottery Authority, S.C.G.L.R. 1088 (2007–2008) (hereinafter Lotto Case).

  63. 63.

    Kludze, “Constitutional Rights,” 682; 1992 Constitution, art. 37(3).

  64. 64.

    Ibid., 683.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., 679.

  66. 66.

    Essien, “Ghana,” 254.

  67. 67.

    Oppong, “Re-imagining International Law,” 255.

  68. 68.

    1969 Constitution, art. 59(1).

  69. 69.

    1969 Constitution, art. 59(2).

  70. 70.

    1979 Constitution, art. 62.

  71. 71.

    1992 Constitution, art. 75(1).

  72. 72.

    1992 Constitution, art. 75(2)(a).

  73. 73.

    1992 Constitution, art. 75(2)(b); Richard Oppong, “The High Court of Ghana Declines to Enforce an ECOWAS Judgment,” African Journal of International and Comparative Law 25, no. 1 (2017): 129.

  74. 74.

    Lang, “Parliament’s Role,” 3–4.

  75. 75.

    Oppong, “The High Court of Ghana,” 129.

  76. 76.

    Shazia Qureshi and Ernest Owusu-Dapaa, “The International Human Right to Health: What Does It Mean for Ghana and Pakistan?” Journal of Political Studies 21, no. 1 (2014): 322.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., 323; 1992 Constitution, art. 33(5).

  78. 78.

    New Patriotic Party v. Inspector-General of Police 2 G.L.R. 459 (1993–1994) [IGP Case].

  79. 79.

    IGP Case, 466.

  80. 80.

    New Patriotic Party v. Attorney-General 1 G.L.R. 378 (1997–1998) [CIBA Case].

  81. 81.

    CIBA Case, 444.

  82. 82.

    CIBA Case, 412.

  83. 83.

    Republic v. High Court (Commercial Division); ex parte Attorney-General (NML Capital Ltd 1st Interested Party) Supreme Court Suit No. J5/10/2013 (unreported) [ARA Libertad Case].

  84. 84.

    ARA Libertad Case, 2–3.

  85. 85.

    ARA Libertad Case, 4; As used by Justice Date-Bah, “appropriate language” suggests an Act of Parliament. This misapprehension that ratification is only possible through legislation to the exclusion of parliamentary resolutions continues to feature prominently in Ghanaian legal commentaries on the subject. See George Sarpong and Emmanuel Benneh, “The Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity in International Law: The ARA Libertad Case (Argentina v. Ghana),” University of Ghana Law Journal 28 (2015): 149–151.

  86. 86.

    ARA Libertad Case, 5–6.

  87. 87.

    ARA Libertad Case, 6 (interpreting 1992 Constitution, arts. 40 and 73).

  88. 88.

    ARA Libertad Case, 7.

  89. 89.

    Mawuse Barker-Vormawor, “Five Years On: A Requiem for the Ex Parte Attorney-General, NML Capital Ltd 1st Interested Party Decision,” Ghana Law Hub (2018), accessed January 3, 2019, https://ghanalawhub.com/five-years-on-a-requiem-for-the-ex-parte-attorney-general-nml-capital-ltd-1st-interested-party-decision/. In defence of Justice Date-Bah, there is a general misapprehension that ratification by resolution does not carry equal weight as ratification by an Act. Therefore, the Constitution Review Commission in its final report suggested Parliament passes a law to distinguish between treaties to be ratified by either an Act or resolution. Constitution Review Commission, Report of the Constitution Review Commission: From a Political to a Developmental Constitution (2011), para. 284; Chief Justice Akuffo in her majority opinion in Margaret Banful and Henry Nana Boakye v. Attorney-General and Ministry of Interior Suit No. J1/7/2016 (unreported) reiterated that treaties must be ratified by an Act or resolution [GITMO Case].

  90. 90.

    Ghana ratified the Statute of the International Criminal Court by a resolution: Parliamentary Debates (November 11, 1999), vols. 23: cols. 1033.

  91. 91.

    VCLT, art. 19.

  92. 92.

    Bhupinder Chimni, “Customary International Law: A Third World Perspective,” American Journal of International Law 112, no. 2 (2018): 9–13.

  93. 93.

    Takele Bulto, “The Monist-Dualist Divide and the Supremacy Clause: Revisiting the Status of Human Rights Treaties in Ethiopia,” Journal of Ethiopian Law 23, no. 1 (2009): 134.

  94. 94.

    Barker-Vormawor, “Five Years On.”

  95. 95.

    1992 Constitution, art. 129(3).

  96. 96.

    IGP Case, 466.

  97. 97.

    VCLT, art. 18.

  98. 98.

    VCLT, arts. 2, 11, 14 and 16.

  99. 99.

    VCLT, art. 27; Mattias Kumm, “The Legitimacy of International Law: A Constitutionalist Framework of Analysis,” European Journal of International Law 15, no. 5 (2004): 910.

  100. 100.

    ARA Libertad Case, 7.

  101. 101.

    Robert Young, Empire, Colony, Postcolony (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), 144.

  102. 102.

    Ibid., 138.

  103. 103.

    Ibid.

  104. 104.

    Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978); Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1994); Lufti Hamadi, “Edward Said: The Postcolonial Theory and the Literature of Decolonization,” European Scientific Journal 2 (2014): 39.

  105. 105.

    Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Eve Darian-Smith, “Postcolonial Law,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. James D. Wright, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015), 18: 647.

  106. 106.

    Sally Merry, “Colonial and Postcolonial Law,” in The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society, ed. Austin Sarat (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), 573.

  107. 107.

    Alpana Roy, “Postcolonial Theory and Law: A Critical Introduction,” Adelaide Law Review 29, no. 1/2 (2008): 315.

  108. 108.

    Obiora Okafor, “Critical Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL): Theory, Methodology or Both?” International Community Law Review 10 (2008): 378.

  109. 109.

    Makau Mutua, “What Is TWAIL,” American Society of International Law Proceedings 94 (2000): 31–32.

  110. 110.

    James Gathii, “TWAIL: A Brief History of Its Origins, Its Decentralized Network, and a Tentative Bibliography,” Trade, Law and Development 3 (2011): 34.

  111. 111.

    David Fidler, “Revolt Against or from Within the West? TWAIL, the Developing World and the Future of International Law,” Chinese Journal of International Law 2, no. 1 (2003): 30.

  112. 112.

    Jalia Kanjave, “A TWAIL Analysis of Foreign Investment and Development-Induced Displacement Resettlement: Lessons from Uganda’s Bujagali Hydroelectric Project,” Ottawa Law Review 44, no. 2 (2013): 218.

  113. 113.

    Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, “Scholarship as Dialogue? TWAIL and the Politics of Methodology,” Journal of International Criminal Justice 14, no. 4 (2016): 928.

  114. 114.

    Bhupinder Chimni, “The World of TWAIL: Introduction to the Special Issue,” Law, Trade and Development 3, no. 1 (2011): 25.

  115. 115.

    Victor Essien, “Sources of Law in Ghana,” Journal of Black Studies 24, no. 3 (1994): 249.

  116. 116.

    Obiora Okafor, “Newness, Imperialism and International Legal Reform in Our Time: A TWAIL Perspective,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 43 (2005): 172 argued that the application of the concept of “newness” as basis for the US unilateral counterterrorism response to post-9/11 events was simply “a political manoeuvre” by dominant states in the Global North to carry out own agenda of extending control over the world by drawing undue significance to this singular act of terror which took place in the US. I describe dualism as political practice in similar sense.

  117. 117.

    Bhupinder Chimni, “International Law Scholarship in Post-colonial India: Coping with Dualism,” Leiden Journal of International Law 23 (2010): 24.

  118. 118.

    Aparna Chandra, “India and International Law: Formal Dualism, Functional Monism,” Indian Journal of International Law 57, nos. 1–2 (2017): 25.

  119. 119.

    James Gathii, “A Critical Appraisal of the International Legal Tradition of Taslim Olawale Elias,” Leiden Journal of International Law 21 (2008): 319.

  120. 120.

    Ibid.

  121. 121.

    Luis Eslava and Sundhya Pahuja, “Beyond the Post (Colonial): TWAIL and the Everyday Life of International Law,” Verfassung und Recht in Übersee 45, no. 2 (2012): 199.

  122. 122.

    Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah, “Power and Justice: Third World Resistance in International Law,” Singapore Yearbook of International Law 10 (2006): 29.

  123. 123.

    VCLT, art. 19.

  124. 124.

    Laurence Helfer, “Not Fully Committed: Reservations, Risks, and Treaty Design,” Yale Journal of International Law 31, no. 2 (2006): 371.

  125. 125.

    Palitha Kohona, “Reservations: Recent Developments in the Practice of the Secretary-General of the United Nations as Depositary of Multilateral Treaties,” Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law 33 (2005): 433–435; Björn Arp, “Denunciation Followed by Re-accession with Reservations to a Treaty: A Critical Appraisal of Contemporary State Practice,” Netherlands International Law Review 61, no. 2 (2014): 144.

  126. 126.

    Nasila Rembe, “The Vienna Convention on State Succession in Respect of Treaties: An African Perspective on Its Applicability and Limitations,” Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa 17, no. 2 (1984): 135.

  127. 127.

    Paust, “Basic Forms,” 263–264.

  128. 128.

    Constitution (Consequential, Transitional and Temporal Provisions) Act 16 (1984), section 5(1).

  129. 129.

    DPP v. Daudi Pete (TZCA) 1 (1991).

  130. 130.

    Amos Enabulele, “Incompatibility of National Law with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: Does the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights Have the Final Say?” African Human Rights Journal 16 (2016): 18–19.

  131. 131.

    IGP Case, 466.

  132. 132.

    Kludze, “Constitutional Rights,” 682.

  133. 133.

    Ernest Y. Ako, “Re-thinking the Domestication of International Treaties in Ghana,” inA Commitment to Law, Development and Public Policy: A Festschrift in Honour of Nana Dr. S.K.B. Asante, ed. Richard F. Oppong and Kissi Agyebeng (Wildy, Simmonds and Hill Publishing, 2016), 597.

  134. 134.

    Gib van Ert, “Canada,” in The Role of Domestic Courts in Treaty Enforcement: A Comparative Study, ed. David Sloss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 204–206.

  135. 135.

    Kenya’s 2010 Constitution did away with dualism, effectively permitting the domestic application of previously ratified but unincorporated treaties and prospectively incorporating treaties upon ratification: Tom Kabau and Chege Njoroge, “The Application of International Law in Kenya and the 2010 Constitution: Critical Issues in the Harmonisation of the Legal System,” The International and Comparative International Law Journal of South Africa 44, no. 3 (2011): 293.

  136. 136.

    Transjudicial communication is the direct application of international law by national or supranational courts irrespective of whether they are binding, domesticated or unincorporated: Anne-Marie Slaughter, “A Typology of Transjudicial Communication,” University of Richmond Law Review 29 (1994): 101.

  137. 137.

    Adjami, “African Courts,” 112.

  138. 138.

    African Charter, art. 1.

  139. 139.

    Appiagyei-Atua, Ghana at 50, 198.

  140. 140.

    Ibid.

  141. 141.

    VCLT, art. 27.

  142. 142.

    Maluwa, “Ratification of African Union Treaties,” 8.

  143. 143.

    Oppong, “Reimagining International Law,” 314.

  144. 144.

    IGP Case, 466.

  145. 145.

    Oppong, “Reimagining International Law,” 314–315.

  146. 146.

    Seventeenth Periodic Report of State Parties Due in 2002: Ghana. 01/10/2002.CERD/C/431/Add.3.

  147. 147.

    Interpretation Act 2009 (Act 792), section 10(4); 1992 Constitution, art. 129(3).

  148. 148.

    Ako, “Re-thinking Domestication,” 603; Ako and Frimpong, “Foreign Relations Law,” 593–595.

  149. 149.

    Bulto, “The Monist-Dualist Divide,” 137.

  150. 150.

    Ibid.

  151. 151.

    Walters, “Creeping Monism”, 643; Chandra, “India and International Law,” 25.

  152. 152.

    Ernest Yaw Ako and Richard Frimpong Oppong, “Foreign Relations Law in the Constitutions and Courts of Commonwealth African Countries,” in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law, ed. Curtis A. Bradley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 593–596.

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Acknowledgments

Doctoral Candidate, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia (Canada); LLM (Harvard); QCL (Gh. Sch. Law); LLB, BA (Univ. of Ghana). I gratefully acknowledge Gideon Gabor and Mawuse Barker-Vormawor for their probing questions and invaluable feedback. I would also like to thank the Canadian Council on International Law for supporting my research through the award of the John Peters Humphrey Fellowship.

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  1. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Godwin E. K. Dzah

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  1. Research Institute of Environmental Law, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Michael Addaney

  2. Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Michael Gyan Nyarko

  3. African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Banjul, The Gambia

    Elsabé Boshoff

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Dzah, G.E.K. (2020). Transcending Dualism: Deconstructing Colonial Vestiges in Ghana’s Treaty Law and Practice. In: Addaney, M., Nyarko, M.G., Boshoff, E. (eds) Governance, Human Rights, and Political Transformation in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27049-0_6

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