Ernest Gaewu

Ernest Yao Gaewu is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana, sworn in on 5 April 2023 after a narrow vote in Parliament. He was born in Ho in 1969 and comes from Abotia in the Ho West District.

He went to Awudome Secondary School and Mawuli School and ran his family business, Kwagame Ghana Ltd, before reading law at the University of Ghana. He was called to the bar in 2000 and practised at Mawulorm Chambers in Ho under Jones Dotse, taking over as head of chambers in 2009. He was secretary of the Volta Bar and sat on the national council of the Ghana Bar Association.

From 2009 to 2016 he was active in the New Patriotic Party, as a constituency chairman and parliamentary candidate in Ho West and Ho Central. He resigned from politics on the day he became a High Court judge in September 2020. When President Akufo-Addo nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2022, the NDC Minority argued his partisan past made him unfit, and Parliament approved him by 138 votes to 134 in March 2023. He was the first judge promoted to the Supreme Court directly from the High Court since J. N. K. Taylor in 1980. He is married with three children.