Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The de­lay in ap­point­ing five new Court of Ap­peal judges is rais­ing con­cerns in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty as three sit­ting ap­pel­late judges pre­pare to demit of­fice, cre­at­ing un­cer­tain­ty over the arrange­ments for No­vem­ber.

A se­nior ju­di­cial of­fi­cer told Guardian Me­dia that the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) sub­mit­ted its rec­om­men­da­tions for the five ap­point­ments to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo last Wednes­day.

How­ev­er, as of yes­ter­day, the in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment had still not been is­sued by Pres­i­dent’s House. Jus­tice of Ap­peal Prakash Moo­sai has re­tired fol­low­ing al­most three decades on the Bench, while the tem­po­rary ap­pel­late ap­point­ments of Jus­tices Car­ol Gob­in and Joan Charles are al­so com­ing to an end, with both judges ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the High Court.

Fol­low­ing their de­par­tures, the Court of Ap­peal is ex­pect­ed to have on­ly 11 of its au­tho­rised com­ple­ment of 16 judges, leav­ing five po­si­tions va­cant.

The source said the de­lay comes as the Ju­di­cia­ry has al­ready pre­pared its No­vem­ber hear­ing al­lo­ca­tions in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the five new ap­point­ments. Ori­en­ta­tion meet­ings had al­so been arranged to fa­cil­i­tate the in­com­ing judges’ com­mence­ment of sit­tings from No­vem­ber 6, but Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that those arrange­ments have been placed on hold be­cause the ap­point­ment in­stru­ments re­main out­stand­ing. A re­li­able source with­in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty warned that fail­ure to com­plete the ap­point­ments could af­fect the con­sti­tu­tion of ap­pel­late pan­els, force the re­al­lo­ca­tion or post­pone­ment of sched­uled ap­peals and re­sult in fur­ther de­lays for lit­i­gants await­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their cas­es.

In re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent as­sured that what­ev­er con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments need­ed to be done would be done.

“The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent wish­es to ad­vise that all con­cerned can rest as­sured that as­sum­ing any arrange­ments are re­quired to be made, any arrange­ments that might be re­quired to be made, will so be made, in the due and prop­er dis­charge by this of­fice of what­ev­er Con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments might re­quire to be made.”

Pri­or to this re­sponse, the ju­di­cial source raised con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns about the de­lay, point­ing to Sec­tion 104(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which pro­vides that judges, oth­er than the Chief Jus­tice, are ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent act­ing in ac­cor­dance with the ad­vice of the JLSC.

The source sub­mit­ted that the Pres­i­dent is en­trust­ed with im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, but the ex­er­cise of those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties must re­main with­in the lim­its and oblig­a­tions pre­scribed by the Con­sti­tu­tion.