A Plea to a Regional Court, the U.S. Birthright Citizenship Debate Rekindled, and Other Legal Highlights

Published July 13, 2025

A Plea to Regional Court

This week, it emerged that suspended Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo has filed a legal action against the Republic of Ghana at the ECOWAS Court of Justice. The development was disclosed by Deputy Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Justice Srem-Sai, who announced the move in a post on Twitter.

According to the Deputy Attorney-General, the suit before the regional court restates the same allegations of human rights violations that are already the subject of pending proceedings before the Supreme Court of Ghana and an Accra High Court. Both cases relate to the legality and procedure of the Chief Justice’s suspension and the broader removal proceedings.

Justice Torkornoo is reported to argue, among other claims, that her suspension has resulted in a de facto removal from office without a final determination by a competent authority, thereby infringing on her constitutional right to serve in the office to which she was duly appointed.

The latest action by Justice Torkornoo, filing a suit at the Ecowas Court is novel within the context of past impeachment processes/proceedings of other public office holders under Article 146. But more than ever, it undoubtedly brings another twist to the ongoing processes for her investigation or impeachment. Most crucially, it complicates the impeachment process conceived under Article 146 of the Constitution.

It remains to be seen what would be the fate of this action before the Ecowas court when viewed against the result of similar applications before the Supreme Court on virtually the same rehashed grounds.

Although recent jurisprudence affirms that exhaustion of local remedies is not a prerequisite for accessing the regional court, one cannot discount the potential for a disruptive conflict of actions and decisions of the ECOWAS Court relative to local remedies and decisions by the local courts, especially when the local remedies have followed due process.  

Trumps birthright citizenship ban under further judicial scrutiny

On 8th July 2025,  Joseph N. Laplante, a federal judge in New Hampshire, embraced class actions, opening a fresh twist in the battle to redefine who can become a citizen.

The judge provisionally certified a class of all children born to parents who are in the United States temporarily or without authorization. Then entered a preliminary injunction in their favor barring the enforcement of Mr. Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship. The injunction applies nationwide.

According the New York Times, the ban would upend the conventional understanding of the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, which reads that: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

Mushroom murder trial concludes

Erin Patterson, the Australian woman accused of killing three relatives with a meal of death cap mushrooms baked in a Beef Wellington lunch, has been found guilty of three counts of murder and the attempted murder of the lone survivor.

A 12-member jury reached the verdict after six days of deliberation following a 10-week trial in Morwell, a tiny town about an hour’s drive from Victoria, where the lethal meal was served in July 2023.

During weeks of testimony, Patterson was accused of deliberately tainting the lunch with death cap mushrooms, highly toxic fungi.

In the days after, her former parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, died along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson. Heather’s husband Ian, their local pastor, survived after a weekslong stay in hospital.

Her defense lawyers had argued the deaths were a “terrible accident” that occurred when Patterson tried to improve the taste of the meal, and that she repeatedly lied to police out of panic when she realized she may have added foraged mushrooms to the mix. CNN