“MAGISTRATES UNQUALIFIED TO DISPENSE JUSTICE”

By: R. Joyclyn Wea

MONROVIA-Pearl Brown Bull, a Senior Supreme Court Lawyer has called on legal practitioners in the country to challenge the qualification of Magistrates to determine their competence to dispense justice without fear or favor.

“If you go before a magistrate with your case and notice that magistrate is not commissioned, you should take him up before the Supreme Court on summary proceedings because he or she is not fit to preside over your case,” Cllr. Bone said.

She further noted that just like lawyers, Magistrates must be commissioned to gain the requisite qualification to carryout their functions.

Cllr. Bull urged the Ministry of Justice to qualify these Magistrates that will put them in favorable positions to dispense justice.

At the same time, she decried judges being rotated due to limited road connectivity, housing facilities, vehicles and other logistics.

“I believe they should allow most of them stay in their circuits so they learned the lawyers and the lawyers can know them and the clerk.”

In a related development, the Legal Practitioner  pledged  to take  on the case of judges’ salaries being cut by the government.

“I am willing to take on this case on behalf of these judges, because I will be saying to the Supreme Court that the Constitution of Liberia of which we only three women signed prohibits the government from cutting judges’ salaries because these people are making sacrifices.”

In the same way, she wants the Minister of Justice to be held in contempt until the government can restitute the full amount cut from these judges’ salaries.

“When my late husband Chief Justice Garrison Bone chief justice of the Supreme Court when they didn’t pay, he sent for them and contempt them and they pay. She added, “They people playing with government around here, you don’t play with the judiciary, so they are wrong and I called upon the executive branch to do the needful by paying them.”