Ignorance of the Law is no excuse; making Ghana’s Legal and Legislative Information Accessible to All

In its attempt to bring governance to the doorstep of its citizens and to promote participatory democracy, the government of Ghana has put in place some measures to make information accessible for its populace to exercise their natural and inalienable right. These measures include the use of ICT tools such as, e-parliament and e-judgment to make legal information and legislative data available. Despite these efforts, the government of Ghana currently has not passed the right to information bill into Law in order to commit the government to provide free access to information. For this reason, there are many who have demanded that access to information be more accessible, open and timely. Citizens and civil based organizations continue to pressurize government to open up and enact laws which will confer to them the legal right to public information of which legal information and legislative data is no exception. In order to help remedy the situation, libraries in Ghana are doing their best to make legal and legislative data free, timely and accessible to the public. However, the current legal deposit law which exempts legal documents and materials printed by the government’s publisher for or on behalf of the government makes this a tedious task. As a result, libraries resort to direct purchase and donations as their main source of acquiring legal and legislative information. This paper will therefore examine the accessibility of legal and legislative information in Ghana, with special focus on current practices, challenges and prospects available in this area. It also looks at the possibility of involving libraries in facilitating the process of accessibility to legal and legislative information online and how section eight (8) of the copyright Act, 2005 can be used as basis to provide free access to enactments and court decisions.