Imported Justice: Examining the Common Law's Customary Roots and Its Misfit within Ghana's Socio-Legal Context

This paper examines the historical and structural tensions arising from the transplantation of English Common Law into Ghana’s pluralistic legal system. It argues that although English Common Law itself evolved from indigenous customs, its colonial reception in the Gold Coast created a legal framework that remains culturally and procedurally misaligned with Ghanaian social realities. Through an analysis of the 1876 Supreme Court Ordinance, customary law, land tenure, intestate succession, and dispute resolution mechanisms, the study demonstrates how the inherited legal order has generated inequities, legal uncertainty, and barriers to access to justice. The paper further contends that the 1992 Constitution provides a foundation for recalibrating this relationship by elevating customary law to a co-equal source of Ghanaian law. It concludes that a more socially just and culturally coherent legal system requires a renewed commitment to developing a distinctly Ghanaian common law grounded in both indigenous and received legal traditions.