Tawia Modibo Ocran

Tawia Modibo Ocran was a legal scholar who taught law in the United States for twenty years before sitting on the Supreme Court of Ghana from 2004 until his death in 2008. He was born John Tawia Ocran at Tarkwa-Nsuaem on 12 September 1942 and died in Akron, Ohio, on 27 October 2008.

He went to St Augustine's College, read law at the University of Ghana and was called to the bar in 1967, then took a master's and a PhD in law and development at the University of Wisconsin. As a student leader he was a committed Nkrumahist; he took the name Modibo after Mali's president Modibo Keita, led the pro-Nkrumah Ghana Socialist Students Organisation, and was briefly detained after the 1966 coup.

He taught at the University of Zambia and Jackson State University, and for twenty years at the University of Akron School of Law, where he became a professor emeritus. In between he headed the Ghana Investments Centre, worked for the UN Economic Commission for Africa and served as a political affairs officer with the UN peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia. He sat on the commission that prepared the 1979 Constitution. His books include Law in Aid of Development and The Legacy of Kwame Nkrumah in Contemporary Ghana. He joined the Supreme Court in 2004 and was elected a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.