Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei Appointed as Inn of Court Judicial Fellow at The InstituteĀ of Legal Advanced Studies

Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei has been elected and appointed as Inn of Court Judicial Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies for the 2022–23 academic year. 

He was selected by the Inns of Court Fellowship Selection Committee made up of a panel consisting of the Director of the Advanced Legal Institute and one senior Bencher from the Lincoln’s Inn, Middle Temple, Gray’s Inn and Inner Temple.

A person who does not belong to one of the four Inns of Court shall not become a barrister in England and Wales. The Inns of Court exercise supervisory and disciplinary functions over their respective members.

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies was founded in 1947 as a national academic institution attached to the University of London to serve all the universities in England and Wales through its national legal research library. 

The core mandate of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is to promote, facilitate, and disseminate the results of advanced study and research in the law discipline for the benefit of persons and institutions in the United Kingdom and abroad.

Each year, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies requests the nomination of one Senior Judge from each of the following thirteen (13) common law jurisdictions who have track records of extensive academic publications in law to be considered as a Judicial Fellow for that academic year. 

The countries are: Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, and the United States of America (Federal).

The applicants were shortlisted to three (3) after a thorough examination by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. The three Judges who were shortlisted for 2022/23 academic positions from the 13 countries were from Canada, Ghana, and South Africa. 

The three candidates were voted upon by the four Benchers and the Director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, and which Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei from Ghana was elected, followed by the Judges from Canada and South Africa in that order.
 
There is one fellow elected and appointed for one year, and it is normally tenable for up to twelve (12) weeks. The fellowship is non-stipendiary, with a limited budget for accommodation and travel. 

Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei starts his fellowship from 5thJanuary, 2023, in London as the first Judicial Fellow from West Africa and the second in Africa, in addition to Hon. Judge Carole Lewis of the then Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa, who was elected the Judicial Fellow for the 2004/2005 Academic Year.

The duties that individual Inns of Court owe to the Fellow while undertaking the fellowship in the United Kingdom include affording the Judicial Fellow a Bencher status, inviting him to meet the Treasurer of the Inns and other senior officers, and delivering lectures to students and members of the Inns.

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is also required to ensure that the Fellow plays a part in its intellectual life and delivers a paper at a lecture or seminar at the Institute. The Fellow is required to make himself available to provide consultation and advice to postgraduate research students working in similar fields of research and scholarship.

Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei is to conduct research on the right to information, protection for persons who seek for information to deepen democracy, and the role of the citizenry to hold public officers accountable.

The Fellow shall be required to submit a detailed report on his fellowship within one (1) month after completing same. The research undertaken by the Fellow may be published sometime after the official period of fellowship has ended.
Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei is a judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, located in Arusha, Tanzania. He is also a judge of the Court of Appeal, Ghana. He was elected as a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei is one of the Nine-Member Advisory Committee on the nomination of judges for the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, Netherlands. He served as the first Chairperson of the African Judicial Education Network on Environmental Law (AJENEL) headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei is a former Dean of the Law Faculty of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). He is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Coast, and the Faculty of Law and Institute of Distance Learning (IDL) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. 

He is also the head of the Judicial Training Institute in Accra. He is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Ghana School of Law (Main Campus) in Accra. He served as the President of the Association of Magistrate and Judges of Ghana for two (2) terms of four (4) years. He was also the Director of the Public Complaints and Inspectorate Division of the Judicial Service for two years.

Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei has authored six (6) law textbooks. They are: Modern Approaches to the Law of Interpretation in Ghana; Land Law, Practice, and Conveyancing in Ghana; Contemporary Criminal Law in Ghana; Criminal Procedure and Practice in Ghana; Constitutional Law of Ghana: Evolution, Theory, and Practice; Essential Laws on Credit Creation and Registration of Security Interests. He also co-authored a law textbook entitled "Alternative Dispute Resolution: A Ghanaian Perspective." He has a number of academic publications in respectable peer-reviewed journals. 

He has made several presentations at the national, continental, and international levels. He has also received awards, citations, and acknowledgements for his contribution to the development of law in Ghana through his prodigious writings from the Association of Magistrates and Judges of Ghana, the Ghana Bar Association, the Ghana School of Law, and the Ashanti Region Branch of the Ghana Bar Association.

He attended Atwimaman Secondary School, Trabuom, Ashanti Region; Wenchi Methodist Secondary School, Wenchi in the Bono Region; the University of Ghana, Legon; the Ghana School of Law, Accra; the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Accra; the University of London, London; and the Duke Law School, North Carolina, United States of America.

The Chief Justice of Ghana, Justice Anin Yeboah, has written to congratulate him for making Ghana’s Judiciary and the whole country proud and has further granted him three (3) months to undertake the Fellowship from January to March 2023 in London for the benefit of the Judiciary and the people of Ghana.