Dr Maame Mensa-Bonsu

Dr Maame Mensa-Bonsu

LSE Fellow

LSE Law School

Room No
New Academic Building 7.24
Languages
English, Fante, French, Ga, Spanish, Twi
Key Expertise
Public law; criminal law; legal philosophy

About me

Maame holds a BA in Theatre Arts and Spanish; and an LLB, both with First Class Honours, from the University of Ghana. She completed the Bachelor of Civil Law with distinction at The University of Oxford, UK in 2014. Until 2017, when she began her DPhil, also at the University of Oxford, Maame was the Programme Coordinator for the Law Department and lecturer in Constitutional and Criminal Law at Lancaster University’s Ghana campus in Accra. She also worked as a technical advisor to an arbitration tribunal at the Ghana Arbitration Centre. Maame is called to the Ghana Bar. Her current research focuses on the constitutional tensions between postcolonial nation-states and the tribal legal orders within their borders.  She has written on judicial review, discretionary powers, executive authority, natural justice and separation of powers.

Research interests

  • Constitutional theory
  • Legal philosophy
  • Criminal law
  • Law, Culture and heritage
  • Comparative constitutional law
  • Comparative criminal law

Teaching

Articles

  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS 'Ghana' in Richard Albert et al (eds) 2020 Global Constitutional Review (forthcoming)
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS & MYA Mensa-Bonsu 'To Win the Battle and the War:  judicial determination of property rights of spouses in Ghana' in JJ Dawuni (ed) Gender and judging across Africa (Routledge 2021)
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS 'Ghana' in Luis Roberto Barroso et al (eds) 2020 International Review of Constitutional Reform
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, 'Why electoral reforms are urgently needed in Ghana' (2021) 29 (2) African Journal of International and Comparative Law 185
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, 'Ghana' in Richard Albert et al (eds) 2019 Global Constitutional Review 144
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, 'Interpreting article 266 of the Ghanaian Constitution: Reflections prompted by Verdose v Verdose-Kuranchie' (2019) 5 Lancaster University Ghana Law Journal 142
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, 'Ghana' in Richard Albert et al (eds) 2018 Global Constitutional Review, 117
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, 'When officials decide: A study of the history and nature of discretionary powers in Ghana' in Oppong & Agyebeng, (eds) A Commitment to Law and Development, a Festschrift in honour of Nana Dr. SKB Asante, (Wildy, Simmonds & Hill 2016) 432
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, 'Keeping the Ghanaian judge from becoming judex in causa sua: 21st century challenges' (2016) 22(3) Commonwealth Judicial Journal 18
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, 'Forty-one in one blow! Thoughts on the proposed single question referendum to amend the Constitution of Ghana' (2016) 24(I) African Journal of International and Comparative Law 1
  • Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, ‘The old order changeth and giveth way to the new: Whatsapp debuts as a means of substituted service in Ghana’ (2015) 15(1) Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal 149

Public engagement

Mensa-Bonsu, MAS, ‘Towards tangible rights in Ghana; with painful steps and slow' Oxford Human Rights Hub