By Sarjo Barrow, Esq.
At my law school in Michigan, we still use the old English legal terms: Michaelmas, Hilary, Easter, and Trinity. I have to admit, I love them. They give a sense of rhythm and remind us that the study of law follows a tradition older than any of us. But while a classroom can follow an academic calendar, a courthouse serving more than two million people cannot. As our courts close for their annual long vacation and a new Chief Justice takes office, it is worth asking if this tradition still makes sense.
The Long Vacation is not a natural law. It is something borrowed from England. The English terms came from the medieval church calendar and an agricultural society, set up so judges could travel and people could plan around farming seasons. The vacation solved a problem from the seventeenth century. The Gambia adopted this solution even though we never had the same problem.
Other countries with similar legal traditions have changed. In the United States, federal courts did not just shorten the break; they got rid of court terms completely. By law, trial and appellate courts are “always open” and never close for a season. See 28 U.S.C. § 452; Fed. R. Civ. P. 77(a); Fed. R. App. P. 45. Only the Supreme Court takes a summer break, and even then, each Justice is still assigned to a circuit to handle emergencies. Closer to us, Ghana, which also follows common law, keeps its courts open during the vacation. Its Chief Justice has twelve of Accra’s forty-two High Courts working during the recess. In The Gambia, only one vacation judge is assigned.
Now look at our numbers. The Judiciary handled 9,942 new cases in 2025 and started this legal year with 8,682 cases still pending. It resolved 6,630 cases, which is a nineteen percent improvement, but still not enough to keep up. The backlog grows not because of laziness, but because about ten thousand cases come in and fewer than seven thousand are finished. On top of that, we add a two-month break and only one judge on duty.
The break is hardest on the High Court, which handles cases from anywhere in the country. When it closes, no lower court can take over most of its work. A remand detainee has to wait. A business stuck in a commercial dispute has to wait. A family with a land issue has to wait—not because a judge decided their case was not ready, but simply because it is August.
The solution does not have to be drastic, and it does not need to affect the Supreme Court. That Court has a small bench—the Chief Justice and up to five other Justices—and only handles a limited range of cases, so a seasonal break there does not affect most people. The High Court is different. Instead of closing it, judges could take leave at different times so the court stays open, with judges working across the regions to handle urgent cases. This would be our own version of the emergency docket I admired in the American system.
This should settle the debate before it even begins: this change probably does not need any amendment. The Constitution already allows the Chief Justice to have the High Court sit wherever he decides and to set up permanent divisions across the country. There are already divisions in Brikama and Basse. See Constitution of The Gambia §§ 131(3), 132(1). The authority is already there. What has been missing is the choice to use it.
I know some will say that judges need rest, time to write their judgments, and time for training. All of that is true, but it does not mean the courthouse has to close. If judges take leave at different times, each one still gets a break while the court stays open. The two goals only clash if we think the whole court must close at once, which is an idea we should let go of. After all, every other civil servant gets their regular monthly leave except for teachers. A judge’s job is not more demanding than that of a nurse or a doctor, but no one would suggest closing all healthcare centers for an annual break.
So let the Inns keep their vacation, and let the law schools keep their traditional terms. In a courtroom, the calendar is not the focus; for the citizen waiting in line, it is the obstacle. A new Chief Justice, handed a backlog that compounds each year, has a rare chance to keep the dignity of tradition and shed its delay—to let the courts, at last, keep working. So my appeal to him is simple. His first order of business asks only a stroke of the pen: a practice direction that keeps the courts open through the vacation. Let the reform begin with this recess, not the next legal year—a signal, on day one, of the direction his tenure will take.
