BENTSI-ENCHILL, KWAMENA

Kwamena Bentsi-Enchill (September 22, 1919-October 21, 1974), a Supreme Court judge and a selfless public servant, was one of the most brilliant lawyers his country has produced.

He was born at Saltpond in 1919, the son of Kofi Bentsi-Enchill, a prosperous agent of the United Africa Company, and of Madam Christiana Obu. He was educated at Achimota College, which he attended from 1927-41. At first he had intended to become a medical doctor, but changed his mind.

On leaving Achimota, he taught at Mantsipim School in Cape Coast, before going up to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1943 to read philosophy, politics, and economics. After graduating in 1947, he returned to the Gold Coast for a while, and then went to London to read law at the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar in 1950, after which he returned to Ghana to serve his pupillage under Mr. Edward Akufo-Addo, in Kwakwaduam Chambers, Accra.

He subsequently established his own practice in Naoberg Chambers, Accra, and soon made a name as an able advocate and a brillant scholar. He had always been interested in politics, and was one of those young intellectuals who joined the Convention People’s Party (C.P.P.) in the early 1950s.

In the 1954 general elections, however, he stood as an independent member for the Saltpond constituency in southern Ghana. He was subsequently expelled from the C.P.P. and thereafter decided to abandon politics. He then began to devote more of his time to the advancement of law in Ghana, and was an active member of the Ghana Bar Association, of which he was secretary from 1958-60. During this period he also became the honorary secretary of “Freedom and Justice,’ the Ghana section of the International Commission of Jurists, acting as its vice-president from 1958-60.

In 1959 the Commission appointed him to a committee to investigate charges of genocide against the Chinese after their suppression of an uprising in Tibet in that year. In 1974 he was appointed to the Commission itself, but did not live long enough to serve as a member. He was keenly interested in legal education and gave up his law practice to teach in the Ghana Law School when it was established in 1958. He joined the Law Faculty of the University of Ghana in 1961 as a senior lecturer, but left the same year for Harvard University in Massachusetts to read for the master of laws degree (I.L.M.), and later for a doctorate in juridical science at the University of Chicago.

While in the U.S. he taught political science at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois before leaving in 1966 to establish the Law Faculty of the University of Zambia in Lusaka. He was professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Zambia from 1966-70, and was responsible for helping to make the university law school a respected institution. He established the Zambia Law Journal, and was its first editor.

In 1968 he also founded the Juristic Studies Association of Zambia, the local branch of the International Association of Legal Science, under the patronage of President Kenneth Kaunda. Under his leadership seminars and public lectures, which became popular, were organized, bringing Zambian lawyers into close contact with the Law Faculty of the university. He also pressed for the establishment of the Council of Law Reporting to undertake the reporting of the decisions of the higher courts of judicature. In addition he was responsible for the establishment of the Law Practice Institute of Zambia which gave practical training to lawyers, and he served as its first director.

Although his numerous activities left him little time for writing, he nevertheless published Land Law in Ghana, in 1964; and contributed to several legal journals in the U.S., Zambia, the United Kingdom, and Ghana. In 1969 he was elected a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and returned to Ghana in 1970. It was suggested that he should become chief justice, but when the appointments were made, the post went to another lawyer. He nevertheless became a Supreme Court judge in 1971. Before his elevation to the Bench, he was an honorary professor of law at the University of Ghana, but often complained that the academic background of the law students was not good enough.

The overthrow of the Second Republic in January 1972 cut short his career as a judge, since the National Redemption Council (N.R.C.) abolished the Supreme Court in September. But he continued to serve his country in various capacities, being appointed Chairman of the Volta River Authority, and later Stool Lands Boundaries Settlement Commissioner. He also served on the Council of the Ghana Academy, engaged in legal research at the University of Ghana, and was a member of the Law Reform Commission. His colleagues were in agreement that he was one of the most outstanding legal minds of his time. The volumes of the Ghana Law Reports from 1951-73 record a number of important cases which he argued at the Bar, and judgements which he delivered on the Bench.

He was noted for his originality, and always strove to show his opponents that his point of view merited more respect than they were at first prepared to admit. He died on October 21, 1974 as a result of a car accident.

K. H. OFOSU APPIAH