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.