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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Archie criticises 'uninformed' media reporting as Law term opens

by

Faine Richards
2125 days ago
20190916
Chief Justice Ivor Archie

Chief Justice Ivor Archie

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has opened the new law term with a scold­ing for the me­dia for what he con­tends is the ab­di­ca­tion of its du­ty to act re­spon­si­bly.

Flanked by judges as he sat in the Con­vo­ca­tion Hall at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, Archie crit­i­cised the me­dia for de­pend­ing on "hard­ly re­li­able" and "un­in­formed" sources in its re­port­ing.

Since 2017, Archie has been un­der in­tense me­dia scruti­ny for al­leged­ly try­ing to sway judges to change their of­fi­cial se­cu­ri­ty provider from a com­pa­ny hired by the State to a ser­vice provider in the pri­vate sec­tor.

The firm he al­leged­ly sug­gest­ed was the em­ploy­er of his friend, Dil­lian John­son, who had a fraud con­vic­tion record.

There were al­so claims that he used his ju­di­cial rank to try to ob­tain State hous­ing for cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als.

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the claims and sub­mit­ted a re­port to the Prime Min­is­ter call­ing for him to trig­ger Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion and ap­point a tri­bunal to ex­plore pos­si­ble im­peach­ment of the Chief Jus­tice.

The Prime Min­is­ter has said his le­gal ad­vice showed in­ad­e­quate sub­stan­ti­a­tion for that re­quest, and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion is con­tem­plat­ing tak­ing the mat­ter to court.

Speak­ing about im­prove­ments in judges' pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the last round of re­cruit­ment to the High Court bench, Archie told judges and lawyers that this nar­ra­tive is ig­nored in part by "the aban­don­ment of the fourth es­tate of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ed­u­cate and in­form, or even to act re­spon­si­bly at times."

"At the risk of crit­i­cism, of be­ing ac­cused of ar­ro­gance, I have to say I am too busy do­ing the peo­ple's work," he said as he dis­missed "un­in­formed" re­port­ing.

"Please don't waste any of our time," he chid­ed the me­dia in re­sponse to re­quests for the ju­di­cia­ry to re­spond to some­thing that is in­ac­cu­rate or "im­per­ti­nent."

He al­so re­spond­ed to the re­sis­tance mount­ed by Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in to her ap­point­ment to the Fam­i­ly Court in To­ba­go.

Gob­in has been out­spo­ken in her crit­i­cism of Archie as the con­tro­ver­sial al­le­ga­tions were made pub­lic over the last two years. In cor­re­spon­dence she sent to Archie af­ter learn­ing of her re­as­sign­ment to To­ba­go, Gob­in ques­tioned whether the move was pun­ish­ment for be­ing vo­cal.

"I have been dis­mayed at the per­cep­tion in some quar­ters that the as­sign­ment of judges to the Fam­i­ly Court im­plies a de­mo­tion or loss of se­nior­i­ty," Archie said this af­ter­noon.

He said the Chief Jus­tice has the dis­cre­tion to as­sign judges any­where, and he said that the law makes it manda­to­ry for judges as­signed to the Fam­i­ly Court to have the ex­pe­ri­ence, tem­pera­ment and qual­i­ties that suit the po­si­tion.

"On­ly a spe­cial type of judge goes there," Archie said.

Archie's ad­dress to mark the open­ing of the law term was the twelfth of his ca­reer at the helm of the ju­di­cia­ry. That makes him the longest-serv­ing chief jus­tice in the post-In­de­pen­dence era.

"That fact alone presents chal­lenges for some peo­ple," he said, "but we all have to suck it up and do the job we are as­signed to do."


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