Is Legal Vacation intended for the Bench or the Bar?

The debate concerning legal vacation in Ghana has, with respect, exposed an unfortunate tendency in legal discourse: the conflation of established practice, professional convention, and administrative tradition with binding law.

If the rules themselves expressly preserve the Chief Justice’s power to appoint vacation days for hearings, it is difficult to derive from Rule 4 an absolute legal prohibition against court sittings during vacation.2423) A lawyer commits professional misconduct if they, without reasonable excuse, fail to: (a) Personally attend Court proceedings for a matter they’re handling, OR (b) Arrange for another lawyer, a firm representative, or an agent to be present throughout the Court proceedings for that matter.