Judgment No. SC 27/18 Civil Appeal No. SC 173/17 In this case, the court stated that the Supreme Court, as an appellate court, cannot act in the first instance and issue such a declaratur, in spite of the parties accepting the notice of appeal to be invalid. On that basis the court declined to grant the relief sought as it highlighted that the court is not clothed with that authority and stated as follows: “In other words, whilst the Supreme Court may do nothing that the law does not permit, the High Court may do anything that the law does not forbid.” Clearly the Supreme Court cannot grant a declaratur in the first instance, even where the parties may be in agreement and approach the court by consent seeking an order beyond the courts’ jurisdiction, such consent does not and cannot compel a judge to issue an order beyond his or her jurisdictional authority. This application cannot therefore succeed. The Blue Rangers case presented the option for a respondent in an appeal to raise its opposition to a notice of appeal by way of a point in limine before the court. This application therefore was ill-founded and premature. The parties should have waited for their day in court to raise their objections to the notice of appeal. Ms Mahere applied to be awarded costs on a legal practitioner scale, on the basis that the case was ill conceived as the issues had already been determined by this court. Mr Mwonzora submitted that the applicant should not be visited with costs on a punitive scale as it was not clear from the rules that they could not approach a judge in chambers to impugn the registrar’s decision. I was inclined to agree with him that there was no decision dealing with the role of the registrar. However, in respect to the other points I was of the view that after the case authorities were highlighted to him he should not have persisted. Thus whilst I am not 8