It seems that almost every time the subject of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) comes up, the people responsible for sharing details on its history, design and functioning have to retrace steps executed a million times before.
This would have been much less painful had our legal
communities, and those in associated disciplines including journalism, paid
greater attention to the vast compendia of data and information disseminated on
a consistent basis since the first signing of the CCJ agreement almost 21 years
ago.
Much like current pandemic struggles, the real issue has
not been a paucity of hard information but of near wilful ignorance,
misinformation, and simply not paying attention.
Deep down, it also appears Caribbean people are yet to
cross the colonial Rubicon. It’s there, right now, with the transition to
republican status in Barbados. It has also been the challenge of countries such
as Jamaica and The Bahamas that have publicly kept their Caricom options open.
There’s also the curse of political hypocrisy excused as
rational pragmatism. One prime minister signed the agreement to set up the
Court then, having lost office, declared a “lack of confidence” in something
that was yet to be properly tested.
Another pointed to an absence of “Indian” judges in 2005, in
2012 described it as indispensable in “furtherance of our national sovereignty”,
then eventually reverted to dismissing its equal applicability across civil and
criminal jurisdictions.
It is thus conceivable that the host country could persist in refusing to sign up to the Court's Appellate Jurisdiction as a final court of appeal, even as it remains by default a signatory to its Original Jurisdiction to settle CSME issues.
I added this last bit of information since it is not true
to assert, as I heard out of Saint Lucia last week and all the time right here
in T&T, that there are Caricom countries that are “not part of the CCJ.” It
is the kind of ignorance people, even in legal practice, utter too often
without contestation.
It is perhaps for this reason, CCJ President Adrian
Saunders took pains to relate some simple facts about the CCJ to a Special
Sitting of the Joint Houses of Assembly of Saint Lucia on January 20.
Like every other member of Caricom and participant in the
CSME, for instance, T&T is automatically a part of the Original
Jurisdiction. In fact, there have been several cases defended by this country
at the CCJ. So, stop saying T&T “does not use the CCJ.”
Further, T&T does not “fund the Court and doh use it.”
Outside of several routine obligations as host country, the CCJ is funded from
the proceeds of a US$100 million trust fund. The “proceeds” of the fund, not
the initial capital which someone in Saint Lucia speculated was probably
already all spent.
The judges and staff of the Court are selected by a
Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission and not by Caricom leaders. The
President is selected by the Commission and appointed or rejected by the votes
of at least three-quarters of the Heads of Caricom States who are not entitled
to propose candidates of their own.
I have spent some time checking the number of cases settled
at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - so vigorously defended by
millionaire attorneys and politicians in T&T - and found that, in 2021,
there were just nine such matters. In 2020 there were another nine and, in
2019, 16, and 11 in 2018.
So, let’s get this straight. All this talk about the ethnic
makeup of the CCJ bench, the lack of confidence in the quality of judges, and
sundry nonsenses are all about a miniscule share of all matters that pass
through this country’s magisterial and judicial channels.
Had the passion of objections to the CCJ been applied to
fixing broken lower court systems, life could have been a lot different for us.
There have been failed attempts via referenda in St Vincent
and the Grenadines, Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda for some of the same
reasons of domestic politics, money, interest (low turnouts at referenda), and
a lack of paying attention.
Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and Guyana have made the move. Today,
the SLP in Saint Lucia possesses the required two-thirds majority to make the
constitutional changes in order to usher in the CCJ. They will get there soon.
Over here, bipartisan support is required. To cut a long
story short, this is going to be one long, hard road for the CCJ, even in its own
hometown.
