JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 11, 2025

Archie defends selection process for judges

by

Derek Achong
2488 days ago
20180918
High Court Judges during yesterday’s Service of Divine Worship for the Ceremonial Opening of the 2018/2019 Law Term at the Port-of-Spain City Hall.

High Court Judges during yesterday’s Service of Divine Worship for the Ceremonial Opening of the 2018/2019 Law Term at the Port-of-Spain City Hall.

ANISTO ALVES

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has de­fend­ed the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC)’s re­cruit­ment pol­i­cy for ju­di­cial of­fi­cers.

In his ad­dress at the Cer­e­mo­ni­al Open­ing of the 2018/2019 Law Term yes­ter­day, Archie, who chairs the JLSC, spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time rais­ing ques­tions on a re­port on the is­sue, pre­pared by a spe­cial com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT), ear­li­er this year.

“Al­though it con­tains some help­ful ob­ser­va­tions, some of which I am in agree­ment with, I find my­self re­spect­ful­ly un­able to agree with sev­er­al of its im­plic­it and ex­plic­it as­sump­tions,” Archie said, as he de­scribed his ob­ser­va­tions as con­struc­tive crit­i­cism.

Archie first­ly took is­sue with the com­mit­tee’s state­ments about the di­ver­si­ty of ju­di­cial of­fi­cers as he de­bat­ed whether it is, in fact, a prob­lem.

“I sug­gest that at the High Court lev­el there is no short­age of fe­males, while the ap­pel­late bench sim­ply re­flects past his­tor­i­cal trends for en­try in­to the pro­fes­sion and not any bias in the ap­point­ment process, giv­en the length of the pe­ri­od re­quired to be­come an ap­pel­late judge,” Archie said.

He was al­so crit­i­cal of the com­mit­tee’s sug­ges­tion that a writ­ten ex­am­i­na­tion for prospec­tive judges was un­fair to some can­di­dates.

“Judges are re­quired to pro­duce writ­ten work of a high qual­i­ty on short no­tice, as well as clear and log­i­cal­ly rea­soned ex­tem­po­ra­ne­ous de­ci­sions. That is the job that they are ap­ply­ing for and that is what the test is meant to as­sess,” Archie said, as he ex­plained that such ex­ams are used in busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive re­cruit­ment.

“Lawyers, I’m afraid, have no cor­ner on in­tegri­ty. If you do not have the hu­mil­i­ty to come and sub­mit your­self to an ex­am, then you are lack­ing a key com­pe­ten­cy for the job.”

Archie al­so ad­dressed the com­mit­tee’s calls for ad­di­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion with the as­so­ci­a­tion pri­or to ap­point­ments, as he point­ed out that it was used in the past but led to un­due ex­ter­nal in­flu­ence in the process.

As he sug­gest­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion could help in the process, Archie said: “Since we are in the busi­ness of of­fer­ing con­struc­tive sug­ges­tions, per­haps the LATT could as­sist by help­ing to make com­pul­so­ry con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion a re­al­i­ty, in­clud­ing train­ing in the rel­e­vant skills iden­ti­fied, such as man­age­ment of peo­ple and re­sources, so that we have a pool of ap­pli­cants from which to make our se­lec­tions.”

He al­so sought to de­bunk the com­mit­tee’s con­cerns over the psy­cho­me­t­ric eval­u­a­tion for can­di­dates, as he point­ed out that the tests were pre­pared, su­per­vised and analysed by in­de­pen­dent hu­man re­source ex­perts and qual­i­fied psy­chol­o­gists.

Archie was care­ful to note that the on­ly time a ma­jor is­sue was raised with the process was last year with the short-lived ju­di­cial ap­point­ment of for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar. But he sim­ply cit­ed the in­ci­dent with­out men­tion­ing Ay­ers-Cae­sar by name or com­ment­ing on a pend­ing law­suit, in which he (Archie) and the JLSC are be­ing sued for al­leged­ly pres­sur­ing her to re­sign.

While Archie dis­agreed with ma­jor seg­ments of the com­mit­tee’s re­port, he said he sup­port­ed its call to make the JLSC fo­cus main­ly on ju­di­cial of­fi­cers as op­posed to its cur­rent re­mit, which in­cludes thou­sands of lawyers work­ing in State en­ter­pris­es and gov­ern­ment min­istries.

Archie al­so took is­sue with sug­ges­tions over the in­de­pen­dence of oth­er mem­bers of the JLSC, which he not­ed were not made in the re­port.

“They were specif­i­cal­ly cho­sen, I am sure, for their ma­tu­ri­ty and their in­de­pen­dence. I know that they would nev­er al­low them­selves to be bul­lied by a Chief Jus­tice, not that I would ever at­tempt to do so,” Archie said.

Re­spond­ing to Archie’s speech af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, LATT pres­i­dent Dou­glas Mendes, SC, thanked Archie for open­ing a pub­lic de­bate on the is­sue.

“I am ac­tu­al­ly quite de­light­ed that the CJ spoke on the re­port and that he has drawn the pub­lic’s at­ten­tion to the rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­port. Of course, no one ex­pects that every­thing in the re­port will meet with the agree­ment of every­one who reads it,” Mendes said.

“Cer­tain­ly that sort of dis­agree­ment is a healthy dis­agree­ment and it pro­vides the ba­sis for de­bate.”

Stat­ing that Par­lia­ment is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion to in­crease the com­ple­ment of judges by 15, Mendes said the as­so­ci­a­tion wrote to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi sug­gest­ing that re­form of the re­cruit­ment process should pro­ceed the fill­ing of the va­can­cies.

“I think it is cru­cial at this time that we en­gage in this process be­fore we start a new round of ap­point­ment of judges be­cause you are talk­ing about 15 new judges and that is go­ing to im­pact up­on the di­rec­tion and the face of the Ju­di­cia­ry for gen­er­a­tions,” Mendes said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored