Contact Information
Biography Information
Dr. Raymond A. Atuguba (Ghana) has academic degrees from the University of Ghana (LLB, 1997), and Harvard Law School (LLM, 2000; SJD, 2004) and was called to the Ghana Bar in 1999.
He is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, where he teaches Conflict of Laws, Administrative Law, Ghana Legal Systems and Method, Jurisprudence and several Human Rights and Law and Development Seminars.
Dr. Atuguba is co-founder of the Legal Resources Centre, a human rights and development organization in Ghana, of which he has also been the Executive Director.
He has researched and published extensively, mostly in relation to the intersection of law, policy and human rights, and the politics and economics of development, institutions and institutional change. Some of these publications are: “Rights and the Limits of Public Interest Law: Ghana’s Reaction to a Messy World Phenomenon”, UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2008; “Public Interest Litigation: A Critical Ingredient for Effective Human Rights Activism in Africa”, WAPILC Quarterly, Volume 1, Number 1, 2009; “Making International Policy: A Stern Look at Ghana’s Policies on Migration and Remittances”, Legon Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 6 No. 2, Nov. 2009; “The Internet and Lawyers in Ghana: Some Initial Qualitative Perspectives”, Library Review, Issue 4, 2007; “Conflicts in Northern Ghana: A Mirror of Answers to Sub-Regional Stability and Security Questions” (2006) 1/2 Asteriskos: Journal of International and Peace Studies; “Ghana: changing urban environmental ills in slum communities” Environmental Policy and Law 34 (4-5, 2004); “Ghana: Migration and the African Urban Complex” in Toyin Falola and Steven J. Salm, (Eds), Globalization and Urbanization in Africa, (Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, Spring 2004); “Ghana: Changing Our Inherited Police Institutions” in Ann Seidman, Robert B. Seidman, et al, Africa’s Challenge: Using Law for Good Governance and Development, (Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2006); “Ghana @ 50: Colonised and Happy”, in H. J. A. N. Mensa-Bonsu et. al. (eds) Ghana Law Since Independence: History, Development and Prospects, (Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Legon, 2007); and “Customary Law: Some Critical Perspectives in Aid of the Constitution Making Process in Zimbabwe” in Norbert Kersting (ed), Constitution in Transition: Academic Inputs for a New Constitution in Zimbabwe (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2009).
He has consulted for many governments and international organizations, including the Government of Ghana; the Government of Liberia, the UNDP, the World Bank, DFID, USAID, GTZ, and DANIDA.
Between 2008 and January 2010 he was a member of the United Nations High Level Task Force on the Implementation of the Right to Development.
He is currently a Consultant to the Forestry Commission (FC) and the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) of Ghana, charged to institute legislative and institutional reform of those institutions.
Dr. Raymond Atuguba was also appointed in January 2010 by the President of Ghana as the Executive Secretary of the Constitution Review Commission which is charged with reviewing the 1992 Constitution of Ghana.
Project Description
In the last two years, I have been on sabbatical from the Law Faculty of the University of Ghana, working as the Executive Secretary and Principal Researcher at the Constitution Review Commission, a Presidential Commission set up in Ghana to review the operation of that country’s two-decade old, longest-lasting Constitution.
The consultative phase, utilizing traditional and innovative hi-tech mechanisms, produced 85,000 submissions from all over the country and from Ghanaians in the Diaspora on governance in Ghana, and is very revealing about what Ghanaians want their Constitution to be for them and their aspirations for a future polity.
The research phase, utilizing a historical institutionalist approach and a problem-solving methodology, evoked the many challenges of dealing with the issues that confront governance in democracies all over the world, whilst testing the resilience of the many theories that are applied to building these democracies.
The review exercise oftentimes disturbed the thin veneer of constitutional and statutory cover over the maze of Customary Law issues that implicate critical national concerns. The conceptual complexities that are created by the inclusion of Customary Law in the maze of governance issues further sullied the capacities of the existing democratic models and solutions.
Finally, the entire process of policymaking, to end with the expression of those policies as legislation, would affect the lives of all Ghanaians, and implicates several decision points. The decision points, which constitute policy spaces are traditionally constructed to be conducive to lawyers and are often hijacked by them. Swimming fast and with strong strokes, the legal profession has contaminated virtually all other legitimate policy sources it cannot control and exterminated those that are weak. This project sought to avoid this, since the legal profession has often waded deep into policy arenas it may not be able to understand, contain and manage. The extent to which it was able to do this and the changes it encountered are instructive on how critical players in a polity influence its destiny.
My project is to deeply reflect on all of these during my stay in Harvard and construct a project to work on in the next couple of years.