Yvonne Ba­boolal

Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Seenath Jairam says judges are not the run-of-the-mill ex­ec­u­tives and he is to­tal­ly against any com­par­i­son of them with the so­ci­ety at large.Jairam was re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to ques­tions from the T&T Guardian on High Court judge Car­ol Gob­in's sug­ges­tion that the salaries of judges who were tardy in de­liv­er­ing judg­ments with­in six months of the con­clu­sion of a case should be with­held.

Gob­in, say­ing she was com­ment­ing in her per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty, made the rec­om­men­da­tion to the Na­tion­al Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Com­mis­sion and al­so called for more open­ness and dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing the ap­point­ment of prospec­tive judges and for records of judg­ments de­liv­ered to be pub­lished.

Her rec­om­men­da­tions come amidst claims from ju­di­cial sources that there is an or­ches­trat­ed plot of re­move Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie from of­fice. The de­bate raged af­ter con­vict­ed killer Lester Pit­man wrote to the ju­di­cia­ry seek­ing to have Archie im­peached on the ground that he had failed to de­liv­er judg­ment in Pit­man's case for four years.

So­cial ac­tivist Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att asked to com­ment on the state­ment by an­oth­er news­pa­per, said she agreed be­cause, for ex­am­ple, the av­er­age work­er gets his end-of-year bonus based on his per­for­mance. She asked why judges should be dif­fer­ent.But Jairam ar­gued that judges are not or­di­nary work­ers.

"Judges are re­quired to make a lot of per­son­al sac­ri­fices, with­draw­ing from many friends and the so­ci­ety gen­er­al­ly, giv­ing up a sig­nif­i­cant part of their so­cial lives, re­stric­tion on their move­ments, lim­it­ing their so­cial cir­cle, liv­ing a vir­tu­al her­mit-like lifestyle."This is so be­cause our so­ci­ety is rel­a­tive­ly small and the per­cep­tion of fair­ness can­not be seen to be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed or com­pro­mised."

Jairam, how­ev­er, agreed with Gob­in that the ju­di­cia­ry need­ed to be more open, ac­count­able, trans­par­ent and ef­fi­cient."Maybe the time has come for the ap­point­ment of more crim­i­nal judges, ap­pel­late judges, and pos­si­bly a Mas­ter of the Rolls, or sim­i­lar of­fice-hold­er."He said judges need­ed time off to write judg­ments and a pe­ri­od of six months should be the up­per lim­it to de­liv­er re­served judg­ments and on­ly in the most dif­fi­cult cas­es.

The JLSC, he added, should be giv­en ex­press pow­ers to deal with er­rant judges and the com­po­si­tion of the com­mis­sion need­ed to be changed. Jairam said he felt it was healthy that the con­ver­sa­tion con­cern­ing judges and the speedy de­liv­ery of judg­ments had start­ed, but was afraid there was no sim­ple so­lu­tion. He iden­ti­fied ex­pe­ri­ence, or lack there­of, as a pos­si­ble prob­lem.

Jairam said 36 years at the Bar had taught him that ex­pe­ri­ence was the life of the law and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the ju­di­cia­ry did not at­tract the most ex­pe­ri­enced lawyers.He added, though, "We have many good ju­di­cial of­fi­cers who are hard­work­ing and well re­spect­ed and it is un­fair to them to be tarred with the pop­u­lar brush of de­lay."

For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man and JLSC mem­ber Ken­neth Lal­la said the ju­di­cia­ry is, ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, an in­de­pen­dent body, but it does form part of the State and, there­fore, has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the State.At the same time, com­plaints about the ju­di­cia­ry and puni­tive mea­sures against mem­bers should be di­rect­ed at the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC).

"More­over, the ju­di­cia­ry is not a law un­to it­self and since the peo­ple con­sti­tute the State, they are en­ti­tled to a sys­tem that is swift, ef­fi­ca­cious and fair."Lal­la felt with­hold­ing judges' salaries for not de­liv­er­ing judg­ments on time was not the way reme­dies and sanc­tions ought to be ap­plied, how­ev­er.Asked specif­i­cal­ly what state the ju­di­cia­ry was in, he replied, "The chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion in which it is at the mo­ment.

"Jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied and, in any event, the Chief Jus­tice ought to di­rect his con­cerns over the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cas­es and in­ad­e­quate mech­a­nisms to deal more ef­fi­cient­ly with them with the pow­ers that be."Lal­la said com­plaints or dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the per­for­mance of the CJ should be raised in the ap­pro­pri­ate quar­ters, like Par­lia­ment, the JLSC and even the Pres­i­dent.He not­ed that the Pit­man mat­ter cur­rent­ly be­fore the court pre­cip­i­tat­ed the present sit­u­a­tion.

"At least some­body raised the is­sue and it has been en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the cit­i­zen­ry.For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said he sup­port­ed ac­tion on the ques­tion of the de­liv­ery of judg­ments, but did not be­lieve the mat­ter should be used as a po­lit­i­cal tool to run Archie out of of­fice."He alone is not re­spon­si­ble for the de­liv­ery of cas­es. It's the whole sys­tem that has to change. There should be rules for judges to de­liv­er cas­es with­in a cer­tain time frame," he said.