Justice Gertrude Torkornoo has been nominated by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to become the next Chief Justice of Ghana.
The Honorable Gertrude Torkornoo
In a letter to the Council of State, Nana Addo asserted that Justice Torkornoo, who has served on the Supreme Court for the past four (4) years and as a member of the Judiciary for the past nineteen (19) years, is duly qualified and eminently suited to fulfill the duties of Chief Justice.
Following in the footsteps of Georgina Theodora Wood and Sophia Akuffo, Justice Torkornoo will become the third female Chief Justice in history.
The following is a description of the new Chief Justice.
Her Majesty Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Torkornoo is a member of Ghana's Supreme Court and the presiding justice of Ghana's Commercial Courts.
Justice Torkornoo was born in Cape Coast on September 11, 1962, and is originally from Winneba in Ghana's Central Region.
She is the second of five siblings born to Abraham Kofi Sackey and Comfort Aba Sackey, who were both teachers at the time.
Her father retired from the Ghana Education Service as Director of Education.
Her mother, however, abandoned her teaching career to investigate sewing, hairdressing, and sales before settling as a baker – a profession in which Justice Torkornoo assisted until she married and left home.
Due to her father's career as a teacher, she grew up on numerous secondary school campuses in Tema, Suhum, Winneba, and Ajumako. Her father held positions including senior housemaster, vice principal, and headmaster. As a youth, Justice Torkornoo desired to become an attorney or an actress.
Her father inspired her to become a lawyer because he always told her that he admired women attorneys and had proclaimed before her birth that she would become a lawyer, which he ensured would occur.
She obtained her GCE Ordinary Level Certificate from Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast, where she completed her secondary education. She subsequently attended Achimota School to earn her Advanced Level Certificate. For her first degree, she studied Law and Sociology at the University of Ghana, and in 1986 she completed the Professional course in law at the Ghana School of Law. She possesses a Master of Laws (LLM) in Intellectual Property Law from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California, as well as a Postgraduate Diploma (PGD) in International Law and Organizations from what was formerly the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands.
Justice Gertrude Torkornoo completed her national service in Accra at the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Legal Aid Center in 1986.
She completed her pupillage at Fugar & Co, where she subsequently became an Associate and then a Director. In 1989, as an Associate at Fugar & Co, she obtained an International Bar Association Construction Law Scholarship, which led to a stage with Nabarro Nathanson in London and Construction Law specialization.
She founded Sozo Law Consult in January 1997 and assumed the role of Managing Partner.
Justice Torkornoo was invited to enter the judiciary in 2004 as a Justice of the High Court of Ghana after 18 years of legal practice. She was elevated to the Court of Appeal in October 2012 and became a Justice of the Supreme Court, the highest court, in 2019.
She is widely recognized as one of the Supreme Court judges who presided over the 2020 presidential petition case involving John Mahama, the Electoral Commission, and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
She has also made substantial contributions to legal knowledge through her non-judicial writings, such as 'Creating Capital from Culture'; 'An Uneasy Marriage – the Relationship between Interest Rate Regimes and Debt Recovery Rates in Ghana' (2012), 'Examining the Borrowers and Lenders Act' (2015), and 'The Law on Interests' (2021).
Justice Torkornoo has held several judicial leadership positions. They include the chair of the Association of Magistrates and Judges' Editorial Committee, the chief editor for the development of the Judicial Ethics Training Manual, the vice-chair of the E-Justice Steering/Oversight Committee, and the vice-chair of the Internship and Clerkship Programme for the Judiciary. Currently, she serves as chairperson of the E-Justice Steering/Oversight Committee.
She is also a faculty member of the Judicial Training Institute and a member of the Judicial Training Institute's governing Board. She is a frequent speaker on a range of topics, including law, leadership, and judicial ethics.
As a woman in the legal profession, Justice Torkornoo has faced obstacles such as balancing her family life and legal and judicial career. However, these obstacles helped her acquire the competencies and skills necessary for her ascent to the summit.
Another obstacle she confronted in her professional life was her nearly ten-year-long journey to specializing in litigation.
In addition, the fact that she was in a male-dominated field increased her determination to succeed. Consequently, she exerted a great deal of effort to prepare in order to produce exceptional work.
Her determination and assertiveness ensured that the arena of engagement with her at work remained on the intellectual level and centered discussions on the quality of her work, as opposed to gender-based remarks.
Outside the courtroom, Justice Torkornoo is a poet and the author of two anthologies, The Child and the Rainbow and The Wise Still Hear the Birds, as well as a number of plays. She is an ardent minister in the body of Christ and a devout Christian who attends the International Central Gospel Church, Calvary Temple. She also serves on the Central University's Governing Council.
Justice Torkornoo founded Sozo Foundation, a ministry dedicated to evangelism through the publication and dissemination of pamphlets and other literary works, out of her love and desire to spread the gospel.
She played a pivotal role in Aglow International and serves on the board of Theovision International, a ministry that translates the Bible into African languages and creates audio Bibles. She has facilitated training at the Haggai Institute for Leadership Development for a number of years.
In all of these duties, Justice Torkornoo is motivated by the conviction that she has received a great deal and must give back as much as she can.