By Sarjo Barrow, Esq.
Lawyer Malick H.B. Jallow recently made a point on Dialectic Space that deserves more than a passing mention. With Chief Justice Hassan B. Jallow approaching the end of his tenure, Malick argued that whoever succeeds him will need real support in running the courts. He pointed to Kenya, where the Chief Justice is backed by a constitutionally established Deputy Chief Justice.
He is right about the problem, but the solution lies elsewhere.
Under the 1997 Constitution, the Chief Justice is made “responsible for the administration and supervision of the courts.” In practice, that single clause turns one person into four: the presiding judge of the Supreme Court, the head of the judiciary, the manager of every courthouse in the country, and the chair of the Judicial Service Commission. The country’s most important judicial mind must also sign off on budgets, buildings, staffing, and IT. No serious justice system should be designed this way.
So yes, the next Chief Justice needs help. But copying Kenya’s Deputy Chief Justice model would only shift the administrative burden from one robe to another. The real lesson from Kenya is the office most Gambians rarely hear about: the Chief Registrar of the Judiciary—a professional administrator, not a judge, who serves as accounting officer and operational head of the courts. Judges judge; administrators administer.
The United States follows the same instinct. The Chief Justice presides, but the day‑to‑day business of budgets, staffing, technology, and statistics sits with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, led by a director appointed by the Chief Justice. Two very different systems, an ocean apart, converge on the same principle: keep judges judging.
The Gambia has already laid the foundation. In 2023, the President appointed a Judicial Secretary to assist the Chief Justice, and the judiciary is now implementing a five‑year Strategic Plan and a performance‑appraisal system. The instinct is correct. What remains is to finish the building, not admire the foundation.
Three practical steps can complete the reform—all achievable by statute.
- Take administration off the bench entirely.
Empower the Judicial Secretary—or a newly created Chief Court Administrator—as the judiciary’s operational head, modeled on Kenya’s Chief Registrar and the U.S. Administrative Office. The Chief Justice would retain supervisory authority, but not day‑to‑day management.
Statutory fix: Amend the existing Acts (JSC or Court) to designate the Judicial Secretary (or Chief Court Administrator) as Accounting Officer and Chief Administrator of the judiciary. No constitutional amendment required.
- Place staffing and administration firmly within the judiciary.
The 2020 draft constitution was right: clerks and court staff should be appointed through the judicial chain, not the executive. Relieving the Chief Justice of administrative work must not quietly hand leverage to the State House. Independence is not only about who appoints judges; it is about who controls the building, the budget, and the staff.
Statutory fix: Amend the Judicial Service Commission Act to give the JSC authority over all non‑judicial appointments within the courts.
- Build realistically: start with regional administration.
The ideal is a professional administrator in every court. But given current caseloads and resources, the sensible interim is regional court administrators who handle listings, records, logistics, and reporting to the central office. This directly strengthens access to justice up‑country, where the system is thinnest.
To illustrate the point: my own active docket this April ran to over 12,000 cases—comparable to the roughly 10,000 cases the Chief Justice identified as the judiciary’s national caseload. I am not overwhelmed because of the administration around me: clerks, case managers, and systems that track and move files. Strip that scaffolding away, and the same docket would bury anyone. A caseload becomes unmanageable not because of its size, but because of what is built—or not built—to manage it.
Who sets policy? The answer already exists.
If a professional administrator runs execution, who sets priorities? In the U.S., broad policy for the federal courts is set not by the Chief Justice alone but by the Judicial Conference, a collegial body he chairs. The Gambia already has the vessel for this role: the Judicial Service Commission. Beyond hiring and discipline, the JSC should become the judiciary’s policy engine—the forum where rules, standards, and priorities are set collectively rather than left on a single desk.
Understood this way, reform simply restores each function to its rightful owner:
- Judges to judge
- The JSC to set policy
- Professional administrators to run the courts
A change of Chief Justice is a rare moment of institutional honesty—a chance to ask not only who should lead the courts, but how the courts should be run. Malick Jallow has opened that conversation. As he put it, statute is only the skeleton; legal scholarship puts the meat on the bones. Let us not bury this debate in the news cycle.
The next Chief Justice should be remembered for judgments, not spreadsheets.
So yes, let us free the bench to judge—and let professionals run the rest.
