Edward Kwame Wiredu

Edward Kwame Wiredu was Chief Justice of Ghana from 2001 to 2003 and brought in the Fast Track High Courts and court-connected alternative dispute resolution. He died on 31 January 2008.

He went to Accra Academy and Adisadel College and began sixth form science at the Kumasi College of Technology, then studied law in London and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1960. After some years in private practice he spent 34 years on the bench, becoming a High Court judge in 1969.

After Jerry Rawlings's failed mutiny of 15 May 1979, Wiredu is recorded as having entered a plea of not guilty on Rawlings's behalf, although Rawlings himself had pleaded guilty. He joined the Court of Appeal in 1980 and the Supreme Court in 1990. President Kufuor made him Chief Justice in November 2001, and he was regarded as a firm defender of judicial independence. Ill health forced him to retire in May 2003.