It is time for Kenya to rethink the number of judges at the Supreme Court

Quorum battles expose structural strain at Kenya’s apex court. [File, Standard]

The just-concluded interviews in the search for a Supreme Court Judge to replace the late Justice Ibrahim have given us Justice Mohammed Warsame. Reflecting on our history of the judiciary that was coloured by opacity in the appointment of judges and the subsequent boiling point of the trust poverty on the judiciary, that is the 2007 post-election violence that was shy of creating a pause to Kenya the nation and Kenya the Republic. Even the fiercest critics of the Constitution as a potential barrier to our ‘development agenda’ will tell you that even in the wildest of dreams, had we ever thought of having a full glare of the Judges' interviews on national television channels, let alone those of the Apex Court. In those two days of interviews by the Judicial Service Commission, several themes came out through the rigorous grilling of various candidates, but most notably for purposes of this piece, there may be signs of the time for us to rethink the number of judges at the Supreme Court in terms of constitutional amendments. The Supreme Court of Kenya has times without count faced the reality of a quorum to sit. This quorum question has arisen not only for basic reasons of life, such as illness and so forth, but for more compelling reasons, which I will shortly focus on.