The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has con­grat­u­lat­ed Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh on his ap­point­ment as the ninth Chief Jus­tice of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, while rais­ing con­cerns about the process that led to his se­lec­tion.

In a state­ment, the As­so­ci­a­tion ac­knowl­edged Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh’s con­tri­bu­tion to the ju­rispru­dence of Trinidad and To­ba­go and his ser­vice as a lec­tur­er at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School. LATT al­so ex­tend­ed its grat­i­tude to out­go­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie ORTT for his years of ser­vice and wished him well in fu­ture en­deav­ours.

How­ev­er, the As­so­ci­a­tion ex­pressed con­cern about what it de­scribed as a “has­tened and trun­cat­ed process” sur­round­ing the ap­point­ment. LATT cit­ed Sec­tion 102 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which re­quires the Pres­i­dent to con­sult with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion be­fore ap­point­ing a Chief Jus­tice.

The state­ment out­lined that mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion re­quires the Pres­i­dent to in­form those with whom con­sul­ta­tion is re­quired about the pro­posed can­di­date or can­di­dates and the rea­sons for the pre­lim­i­nary choice. It added that con­sul­ta­tion should oc­cur be­fore a fi­nal de­ci­sion is made, with ad­e­quate time giv­en for con­sid­er­a­tion and re­sponse.

Ac­cord­ing to LATT, the “ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly short pe­ri­od of time” over which con­sul­ta­tion took place made it un­like­ly that these con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples were fol­lowed. The As­so­ci­a­tion said it is es­sen­tial that ap­point­ments to the high­est ju­di­cial of­fice be ground­ed in trans­paren­cy and ad­her­ence to con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ments.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the un­ex­pect­ed res­ig­na­tion of the for­mer Chief Jus­tice, LATT said the process to fill the va­can­cy must still in­volve prop­er and rea­son­able con­sul­ta­tion.

De­spite its con­cerns, LATT said it has full con­fi­dence in Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh’s abil­i­ty to lead the Ju­di­cia­ry and looks for­ward to work­ing with him to ad­dress on­go­ing is­sues in the jus­tice sys­tem.