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Thursday, May 22, 2025

MORE THAN JUST JUDGING

by

20120720

At a time in our na­tion's his­to­ry when we are gear­ing up for the cel­e­bra­tion of our 50 years since at­tain­ing in­de­pen­dence, there are many who are us­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the roles of those in­sti­tu­tions that are right­ly re­gard­ed as the guardians of our democ­ra­cy. Last week, Jus­tice Adri­an Saun­ders, a judge of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ), de­liv­ered a lec­ture on the top­ic, "The Role of the Court of Ap­peal in De­vel­op­ing and Pre­serv­ing an In­de­pen­dent and Just So­ci­ety." I wish to high­light some of the mat­ters raised by Jus­tice Saun­ders which, if al­lowed to in­form our think­ing, will au­gur to the ben­e­fit of our na­tion and the re­gion as a whole. This Gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to bring to the Par­lia­ment leg­is­la­tion that will make the CCJ the fi­nal court of ap­peal for crim­i­nal mat­ters while re­tain­ing the Privy Coun­cil (PC) as the fi­nal ap­pel­late court for civ­il lit­i­ga­tion. This in­ten­tion has been met with mixed re­views and a gen­uine con­cern that there should be a com­plete abo­li­tion of ap­peals to the PC.

Those who ad­vo­cate the re­ten­tion of the PC sug­gest that we as a peo­ple are not yet ready to in­de­pen­dent­ly chart our ju­rispru­den­tial course, a state­ment which, even if clothed in the most diplo­mat­ic gar­ments, is an in­dict­ment on the char­ac­ter and com­pe­tence of our ju­di­cia­ry. The irony is that the PC it­self has recog­nised the bril­liance of our judges, as ev­i­denced in the case of Bertoli et al v Mal­one [1991] UKPC 17, in which the Court of Ap­peal judg­ment de­liv­ered by a Caribbean ju­rist, the late Jus­tice Telford Georges, was re­ferred to by the PC in the fol­low­ing terms: "The ar­gu­ments and the au­thor­i­ties have been so ful­ly and so metic­u­lous­ly re­hearsed in the care­ful and in­struc­tive judg­ment of the Court of Ap­peal ... that it would be a work of supereroga­tion for their Lord­ships to re­peat what was there said in dif­fer­ent and prob­a­bly less fe­lic­i­tous lan­guage. They are con­tent to ac­cept and adopt the rea­son­ing...in to­to." Lit­tle won­der that Jus­tice Saun­ders opined in his ad­dress: "The prob­lem that we face in the Carib-bean is the her­culean one of clos-ing the gap be­tween this de­mon- stra­tion of ex­cel­lence and our peo­ple's recog­ni­tion and af­fir­ma­tion of it." It is un­for­tu­nate but true that de­spite the ac­knowl­edge­ment giv­en by for­eign ob­servers, ju­rists and aca­d­e­mics that our re­gion pos­sess­es le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies who stand on equal foot­ing with their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts, our lack of self-worth has pre­vent­ed us from mak­ing the gi­ant step of ac­cept­ing the CCJ as our fi­nal court of ap­peal.

In this age of ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and so­cial me­dia, it is im­por­tant that ap­pro­pri­ate use is made of all avail­able av­enues of com­mu­ni­ca­tion so that the record of our abil­i­ty to pro­duce judges of great dis­tinc­tion is ap­pre­ci­at­ed by all peo­ple from all walks of life, es­pe­cial­ly our younger gen­er­a­tion, up­on whom we re­ly to take our Carib-bean ju­rispru­dence to the next lev­el. The fact that the Caribbean pub­lic dis­plays a lack of con­fi­dence and trust in its judges was ad­dressed by Jus­tice Saun­ders, who ac­cept­ed that: "Care must be tak­en to en­sure that ju­di­cial of­fi­cers con­form to the high­est stan­dards of con­duct and that eth­i­cal in­frac­tions among ju­di­cial of­fi­cers are im­me­di­ate­ly and ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed. "Be­yond these mea­sures, courts must en­gage with the pub­lic in mean­ing­ful ways. A com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pub­lic-ed­u­ca­tion out­reach would help to in­form the pub­lic bet­ter about the meth­ods of work of the courts." In this time of high crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, with ur­gent and des­per­ate calls for all hands to come on deck to as­sist in the fight against crime, the ju­di­cia­ry must be al­lowed to play its role, with­out com­pro­mise of its in­de­pen­dence, in crim­i­nal jus­tice re­form.

Recog­nis­ing the im­por­tant role to be played by the ju­di­cia­ry, Jus­tice Saun­ders stat­ed: "It is es­sen­tial that, along with the oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment, the ju­di­cia­ry should play a lead­er­ship role in guid­ing a holis­tic ap­proach to crim­i­nal jus­tice re­form; an ap­proach that in­te­grates pro­grammes that si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly im­prove and co-or­di­nate the func­tion­ing of the var­i­ous ac­tors and in­sti­tu­tions with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem." It is with this think­ing in mind that I con­tin­ue to pro­pose the es­tab­lish­ment of the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Agency, an in­de­pen­dent body com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all in­sti­tu­tions in­volved in crime pre- ven­tion and crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, in­clud­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the ju­di­cia­ry, so that all the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers are made part of a dy­nam­ic think tank which prop­er­ly for­mu­lates mea­sures for fix­ing the de­fi­cien­cies in the sys­tem. That Jus­tice Saun­ders pre­sent­ed a mean­ing­ful dis­course wor­thy of our favourable con­sid­er­a­tion proves that there ex­ist amongst us in­di­vid­u­als who can com­pe­tent­ly set the course for holis­tic Caribbean de­vel­op­ment.


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