Deputy Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, has rejected the Ghana Bar Association’s position that the availability of lawyers should determine whether court proceedings continue during the legal vacation.The GBA, in a letter to Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie on Monday, August 10, raised concerns about directives requiring lawyers to appear before Vacation Courts despite having indicated that they were unavailable.The association said the legal vacation, which runs from August 1 to September 30, is intended to provide judges, lawyers and judicial staff with a period of respite after the demanding court calendar.While acknowledging that Vacation Courts may sit to deal with urgent and interlocutory matters, the GBA said the established practice was for such courts not to conduct trials, particularly where counsel was unavailable.It consequently argued that where a lawyer notifies the court of their inability to appear, the matter should be adjourned.“Counsels are not under any compulsion whatsoever to appear before a Vacation Court,” the GBA said, insisting that a scheduled matter could not proceed where counsel on either side had indicated an inability to participate during the vacation.However, Dr Srem-Sai, in a write-up, has disputed the position, arguing that the power to determine how court proceedings are conducted rests with the judiciary and not the lawyers appearing before the court.He said the primary duty of a lawyer is to their client and that allowing counsel to determine whether proceedings should continue could undermine the court’s responsibility to balance the interests of all parties.“A lawyer’s primary duty is, in fact, to his client – not to the client of another lawyer,” he said, arguing that it would be problematic for the availability of one lawyer to become the overriding consideration in determining how justice is administered.He said the Chief Justice has the administrative authority to determine when and where courts sit during the legal vacation, while individual judges have the judicial power to manage proceedings before them.Dr Srem-Sai nevertheless acknowledged that lawyers who require a break during the vacation can make a request to the judge for an accommodation.He said the judge could grant the request wholly or partially, depending on the circumstances and the interests of justice.“What a professional lawyer is not entitled to, and cannot do is to, in vacuo, beforehand, declare that he will not attend proceedings at all,” he said.