Dar­ren Ba­haw

In the face of crit­i­cism from se­nior mem­bers of the pro­fes­sion over its dor­mant role in the cur­rent cri­sis fac­ing the ju­di­cia­ry, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to­day con­venes a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing to dis­cuss the ap­proval of a $15 mil­lion bud­get to out­fit its new head­quar­ters on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.The meet­ing which takes place at the Con­vo­ca­tion Hall is sched­uled to be­gin at 3 pm and will dis­cuss cur­rent pub­lic crit­i­cism of the ju­di­cia­ry's fail­ure to dis­pense speedy jus­tice.

Since the furore over a threat by death row in­mates Lester Pit­man and Ger­ard Wil­son to take le­gal ac­tion against the Chief Jus­tice for fail­ing to de­liv­er judg­ments in their ap­peal for close to four years, the as­so­ci­a­tion has on­ly is­sued one state­ment, on De­cem­ber 5.

The state­ment re­ferred to sev­er­al news­pa­per ar­ti­cles and ed­i­to­ri­als on the is­sue and ex­pressed "deep con­cern of un­ex­plained and ex­ces­sive de­lays in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments" and re­it­er­at­ed the adage "jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied."

"The re­cent is­sue as raised in the me­dia more im­por­tant­ly gives an op­por­tu­ni­ty for pause to con­sid­er the broad­er un­der­ly­ing is­sues that af­fect the ju­di­cia­ry and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion is­sues a clar­i­on call to the ju­di­cia­ry to treat the is­sue of de­lay in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments as a pri­or­i­ty, and re­solves to sup­port the ju­di­cia­ry in find­ing so­lu­tions that ac­cord with the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to due process," the state­ment not­ed.

How­ev­er, many se­nior prac­ti­tion­ers have called for a more proac­tive role by the as­so­ci­a­tion, with one even sug­gest­ing that a team meet with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to find so­lu­tions to the prob­lem.To­day's meet­ing al­so seeks to get ap­proval for funds to fur­nish the new build­ing, which was pur­chased for $13 mil­lion while re­pair and retro-fit­ting work has been es­ti­mat­ed at an­oth­er $2.5 mil­lion. A par­cel of land pre­vi­ous­ly pur­chased by the as­so­ci­a­tion at Haye Street, St Clair, was sold in Oc­to­ber for $7.5 mil­lion.