Parliament vets two Supreme Court nominees

The Parliament’s Appointment Committee convenes today (Thursday) to vet new Supreme Court judge nominees.

These are justices Catherine Bamugemereire and Monica Mugenyi.

The appointment of the judges by President Yoweri Museveni brings the number of Supreme Court judges to 11.

In the new appointments, Judicial Service Commission (JSC), Stella Atingu and John Paul Edoku were also named acting Registrars while Slyvia Nabaggala as the Registrar of the Industrial Court.

The development comes barely three months after Parliament passed the Judicature (Amendment) Bill, 2023, rejecting a proposal to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from 11 to 21.

Parliament rejected the proposal and instead advised the Judiciary to implement a court screening system at the Supreme Court for pre-filing case reviews.

The Chairperson of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, Robinah Rwakoojo, presented a report recommending the deletion of clause 1, emphasising the committee’s stance against increasing the Supreme Court’s justices.

Parliament, however, endorsed the increment of the number of Court of Appeal justices to 20. The elevation of the two judges to the Supreme Court means the Court of Appeal will only be left with 10 judges.

The continuous recruitment of judicial officers at different levels in the judiciary follows the enhancement of the Judiciary budget by the Government from the initial sh199b in the financial year 2020/21 to the current sh382b.

According to the Judiciary Annual Performance Report for the financial year 2021/22, the increment in staffing enabled the Judiciary to increase the coverage of operational courts from 238 to 300 across the country and as a result of the improved coverage, more cases were disposed of reducing the menace of case backlog to 30% from 32% in the financial year 2020/21.

Last financial year, the court disposed of a total of 205,967 cases out of a total caseload of 373,974 accounting for 55% of all cases in the system.

Who are the new judges?

Bamugemereire is a Ugandan lawyer and judge who, since 2015, has served as a Justice of the Court of Appeal of Uganda, which doubles as Uganda's Constitutional Court.

Bamugemereire first worked in 1993, as a State Attorney in the Uganda Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, based in Arua district, in the West Nile sub-region.

Later, she was appointed as a Grade One Magistrate. She rose through the ranks to the rank of Chief Magistrate of "the White-Collar Criminal Court in Uganda in the 1990s.

In 2001, she took leave from the bench and became a legal adviser to Shell Mexico LPG in Mexico City. After that, she studied for her master's degree in the United States. In 2003, she relocated to the United Kingdom and worked as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Surrey, for seven years.

In 2010, the Ugandan Judiciary appointed her a Judge in the High Court, to work in the Anti-Corruption and Family Divisions of the Court. In 2015, she was appointed to Uganda’s Court of Appeal/Constitutional Court and is now elevated to the Supreme Court.

Monica Mugenyi

She graduated from the Faculty of Law of Makerere University, Uganda's largest and oldest public university, with a Bachelor of Laws, circa 1992.

The following year, she was awarded a Diploma in Legal Practice by the Law Development Centre in Kampala, Uganda's capital city. She also holds a Master of Laws in International Trade Law, from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. In addition, she is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Prior to her ascension to the bench, she was in private practice at Mugenyi and Company Advocates and had served as the manager of corporate services at the Uganda Road Fund.

She also previously worked in the Office of the Attorney General and in the Privatisation Unit.

At the High Court, she was seconded to the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), where she serves as the Principal Judge.

In October 2019, she was named to sit on the Uganda Court of Appeal and is now elevated to the Supreme Court.