Richard Lord

The Gov­ern­ment is open­ly invit­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to dis­cuss the pro­posed changes to the draft con­sti­tu­tion as they re­late to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in T&T.

The in­vi­ta­tion is con­tained in a state­ment is­sued late yes­ter­day by the Gov­ern­ment in re­sponse to the CJ's crit­i­cisms of the pro­posed changes, which in­cludes the es­tab­lish­ment of a Min­istry of Jus­tice. "The Gov­ern­ment notes the Chief Jus­tice's com­ments on the con­cept of a Min­istry of Jus­tice, and wel­comes these com­ments as part of the on­go­ing con­sul­ta­tion process," the two-page state­ment said. "Hav­ing now made pub­lic his com­ments on the work­ing doc­u­ment, the Gov­ern­ment an­tic­i­pates that the ju­di­cia­ry and the Chief Jus­tice will now re­spond to the stand­ing in­vi­ta­tion of the Gov­ern­ment to meet with a team from the Ex­ec­u­tive to dis­cuss the gen­er­al arrange­ments for the de­liv­ery of jus­tice," the Gov­ern­ment added. The Gov­ern­ment al­so said the con­cept of a Min­istry of Jus­tice was not a nov­el idea as Min­istries of Jus­tice al­ready ex­ist­ed in sev­er­al Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries and the Unit­ed King­dom, from which much of this coun­try's ju­di­cial arrange­ments were in­her­it­ed.

In his 50-minute ad­dress to the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the 2010 Law Term at the Hall of Jus­tice on Wednes­day, CJ Archie ex­pressed con­cern about the pro­vi­sion in the draft con­sti­tu­tion, say­ing: "The dan­ger (with it) lies in the po­ten­tial to grad­u­al­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly strip the ju­di­cia­ry of its in­de­pen­dence, and the cit­i­zens of their pro­tec­tion through or­di­nary and sub­or­di­nate leg­is­la­tion re­quir­ing no spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty." The state­ment re­it­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers doc­trine and the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry. It not­ed that sev­er­al suc­ces­sive Chief Jus­tices and com­mis­sions of en­quiry, dat­ing back to the Napi­er Com­mis­sion in 1952, had said that the arrange­ments for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice "have not al­ways worked to pro­duce a speedy, a fair and an ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of ser­vice. "A more so­phis­ti­cat­ed jus­tice sys­tem is now be­ing de­mand­ed by a dis­cern­ing pub­lic as­pir­ing to de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus," the state­ment said.

It added that "re­spon­si­ble and trans­par­ent re­spons­es to these de­mands should lie at the heart of the arrange­ments that are put in place for the de­liv­ery of swift jus­tice." The state­ment said that the pro­pos­als con­tained in the Work­ing Doc­u­ment on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form, which was laid in Par­lia­ment on Jan­u­ary 9, 2009, "are in­tend­ed to ad­dress these de­mands and will no doubt be fur­ther re­fined as more and more stake­hold­ers em­brace the process." The Gov­ern­ment said the process of pub­lic com­ments should be com­plet­ed with­in the next 18 months. "Con­sti­tu­tion re­form is a ma­jor un­der­tak­ing and the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready com­mit­ted (it­self) to, not on­ly wel­com­ing all com­ments on the work­ing doc­u­ment, but en­gag­ing in fur­ther wide­spread con­sul­ta­tions, the re­sults of which will be care­ful­ly ex­am­ined be­fore be­ing placed in a Green Pa­per for fur­ther pub­lic com­ment, as a pre­lude to any draft bill be­ing laid in Par­lia­ment," the state­ment said. It added that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had been speak­ing ex­ten­sive­ly across the na­tion about the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al changes to "stim­u­late na­tion­wide dis­cus­sion" on it.