Ghana’s Coroners Act of 1960 (Act 18), At 65 – a Colonial-Era Framework for Death Investigations

Sixty-five (65) years after its passage, Ghana’s Coroners Act, 1960 (Act 18), stands as one of the country’s oldest surviving legal instruments from the immediate post-independence period. Enacted and assented to on December 15, 1960, to consolidate and amend the law on coroners, the Act was inherited almost wholesale from the British colonial legal tradition and has remained largely untouched ever since.

Its longevity is often cited as evidence of stability. Despite this historical “stability,”…