Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Head of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan has wel­comed the pro­pos­al by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­tro­duce a Lord Chan­cel­lor.

Speak­ing dur­ing the UNC’s Mon­day Night Re­port in Pe­nal, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, will be draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to cre­ate the po­si­tion, which would sup­port Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

“The Law Re­form Com­mis­sion has pre­pared a re­search note, and we are re­view­ing it. The Chief Jus­tice will still be in charge of the ju­di­cia­ry, but the chan­cel­lor will over­see the day-to-day lo­gis­tics and run­ning of the courts. At the same time, the CJ will fo­cus on man­ag­ing le­gal cas­es and over­see­ing judges, mag­is­trates, mas­ters, and oth­er ju­di­cial per­son­nel.”

Khan said the idea was not new, as the as­so­ci­a­tion has been call­ing for the CJ to be as­sist­ed for some years. How­ev­er, he did not pro­vide any pub­lic record of this.

He added, “I think it is a very good idea, be­cause the Chief Jus­tice is not a Chief Jus­tice of yes­ter­day. There are hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of cas­es pend­ing. He can­not re­al­ly man­age the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the staff and the lo­gis­tics of the Chief Jus­tice’s of­fice and, at the same time, sit as Chief Jus­tice in the Court of Ap­peal and as­sign, with cer­tain cas­es, to cer­tain judges and so on. He’s over­bur­dened.”

Khan said the po­si­tion may be like that of the Lord Chan­cel­lor in the UK, which is a po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed po­si­tion, like the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice. There are chan­cel­lor po­si­tions in Guyana and Ja­maica.

Khan said the po­si­tion will not take away from Archie’s pow­ers.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to judges, on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, who said that the Chief Jus­tice has been call­ing for this for years. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia found no pub­lic record of this.

One of the judges called for more clar­i­ty on the po­si­tion.

“One is not sure at this stage ex­act­ly what the in­ten­tion is and how the func­tions of chan­cel­lor are go­ing to cor­re­late with that of Chief Jus­tice and whether the in­ten­tion is to have the chan­cel­lor as the head of the ju­di­cia­ry as it is in Guyana or adopt the Eng­lish mod­el where the Chief Jus­tice is still the head of the ju­di­cia­ry.

“At the end of the day, how­ev­er, I think that the move is prac­ti­cal and proac­tive be­cause clear­ly the ad­min­is­tra­tive ef­fi­cien­cy of the Ju­di­cia­ry leaves a lot to be de­sired ...”

Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion Lynette See­baran-Suite, SC, said the as­so­ci­a­tion was con­sid­er­ing the sug­ges­tion be­fore com­ment­ing.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to the ju­di­cia­ry, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein on the is­sue, but there was no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.