On Friday, the outgoing president of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Michael de la Bastide, marked his last day of work as the founding leader of that institution and the official beginning of his retirement after an exemplary lifelong career in law and public service.Over a long career in law, de la Bastide signalled excellence early, becoming a Queen's Counsel at 38 in 1975 and serving as an Independent Senator from 1976 to 1981. He also served as president of the Law Association from 1987 to 1990 before being appointed Chief Justice in 1995.He became a member of the Privy Council in 2004, joining, for life, the exclusive body of lawyers within that august collective of minds which advises the Queen of England on certain key matters of royal perogative. Among the council's responsibilities is the hearing of appeals from the Crown Dependencies, the British Overseas Territories, and some Commonwealth member countries.
In 2005, Michael de la Bastide was sworn in as president of the Caribbean Court of Justice, the body meant to assume the role of regional judicial tribunal of final appeal for signatories within the archipelago.Despite the continuing use of the Privy Council by many islands, including Trinidad and Tobago, as a court of final appeal, the role of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council ceased long ago to be a formal supreme court for the holdings of the British Empire, far less those that have declared independence from Her Majesty's monarchy.
The continuing inability of so many of the Caribbean's independent nations to accept the CCJ as the court of final appeal speaks directly to the lingering and unfortunate loyalties to an imperial history that still dilutes the will to forge the future of the region as a unified and potent entity.The failure of Caricom member states to rally to the essential principle that the CCJ represents a key indicator of the failure of regional governments to acknowledge the potential of the region as a more cohesive and more robust aggregate of skills, resources and capacity.
In the six years that Michael de la Bastide presided over the operations of the CCJ it must have been particularly galling to know that the regional authority had only been accepted by, for much of that time, just two of the nations of the Caribbean, Barbados and Guyana, who severed ties with the Privy Council and accepted the CCJ as their final appellate court. Belize joined in June 2010 and its final appeal to the Privy Council started this month. It isn't as if the Privy Council has been enthusiastic about all these appeals from the Caribbean cluttering up its agenda, and the council has complained on several occasions about the time and judicial resources that are taken up with appeals from the region.
But neither shame about its unwanted status nor pride in the accomplishment that the formation of the CCJ represents has moved most of the region's nation states to amend their laws to embrace the regional court as their final appellate body.Leading this irritating fealty to British judicial authority are two of the largest and arguably most influential islands of the region, the other two members of Caricom's "big four," Jamaica and our very own Trinidad and Tobago, which is, even more embarrassingly, home to the court itself.In announcing his retirement, Michael De La Bastide announced no plans beyond a general interest in recording his experiences and a wish to pursue "useful and enjoyable" pursuits that did not descend into drudgery.
It's hard to imagine how the recollection and recording of the experiences of this keen and committed legal mind, accumulated over the volatile years of this nation's maturing after independence, could amount to anything less than a riveting and invaluable documentation of this country's recent legal and political history.Michael de la Bastide deserves a retirement full of engagement, personal reward and a continuance, on his own terms, of a life that has been hallmarked by service to the highest ideals of his profession and his country.If there's a great book to be done in there, so much the better.