A Supreme Court judge has been awarded the 2013 East African Law Society senior lawyer of the year award for his professional achievements. Justice Jackton Ojwang received the award from Chief Justice Willy Mutunga.
Others in attendance were Deputy Chief Justice Kalpana Rawal and Justices Philip Tanui, Smokin Wanjala, Njoki Ndung’u and Ibrahim Warsame at the Supreme Court Buildings in Nairobi yesterday.
Mutunga said it was an honour to the Kenyan Judiciary to have one of its own receive the prestigious award. "This award is not something that I expected and it is not easy to link it directly to the work I have been doing,” Ojwang said.
He added that although he enjoys his work as a Supreme Court judge, he ‘misses the old times at the High court’ as it used to give him more opportunities to do more work.
The EALS is the premier regional Bar Association of East Africa that brings together the national Law Societies of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
It has over 10,000 individual lawyers as its members and strives to enhance the rule of law, human rights and good governance with a view to promoting sustainable social and economic development.
Ojwang went to Homa Bay and Thika high schools in between 1965 and 1970 then to University of Nairobi where he earned the LLB and LLM degrees before proceeding to Cambridge where he earned a PHD degree specializing in comparative constitutional law.
He then joined the Judiciary as a High court judge on 28 October 2003 and served for six years and two years respectively at the Nairobi and Mombasa stations. He was later appointed a justice of the inaugural bench of the supreme court of Kenya on 16 June 2011.