Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira (SC) has rec­om­mend­ed con­fi­den­tial me­di­a­tion to re­pair strained re­la­tion­ships with­in the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ), stress­ing that if cred­i­ble al­le­ga­tions re­main, they must be ad­dressed through the for­mal mech­a­nisms es­tab­lished by the CCJ Agree­ment.

Re­spond­ing to re­ports of in­ter­nal CCJ cor­re­spon­dence high­light­ing con­cerns over the lead­er­ship of Jus­tice Win­ston An­der­son, Vieira said that 21 years af­ter its in­au­gu­ra­tion, the court has built a sub­stan­tial body of ju­rispru­dence and cred­i­bil­i­ty.

“One pe­ri­od of in­ter­nal tur­bu­lence shouldn’t cause us to aban­don that achieve­ment—it should cause us to pro­tect it. The wa­ters may present­ly be trou­bled. The an­swer isn’t to sink the ship, but to steady it,” he said.

Vieira ac­knowl­edged re­ports of se­ri­ous dis­agree­ments among CCJ judges, but cau­tioned against pan­ic or “all-or-noth­ing” think­ing. He warned that al­le­ga­tions should not be ac­cept­ed as facts mere­ly through rep­e­ti­tion, nor should in­ter­nal dis­putes be used to di­min­ish the in­sti­tu­tion.

“The CCJ is big­ger than any pres­i­dent, any in­di­vid­ual judge, and any dis­agree­ment among its mem­bers,” he added.

He not­ed that vig­or­ous de­bate is part of ap­pel­late ad­ju­di­ca­tion, with judges cir­cu­lat­ing draft judg­ments, de­bat­ing propo­si­tions and at­tempt­ing to per­suade col­leagues. How­ev­er, he stressed the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing bound­aries.

“There’s a line be­tween per­sua­sion and pres­sure; be­tween ju­di­cial lead­er­ship and ju­di­cial con­trol; be­tween le­git­i­mate ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­ter­fer­ence with ad­ju­di­ca­tion—and that line should nev­er be crossed.”

Vieira said al­le­ga­tions of pan­el ma­nip­u­la­tion or im­prop­er in­flu­ence on ju­di­cial de­ci­sions must be ad­dressed care­ful­ly and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ly. He em­pha­sised that cor­re­spon­dence con­tain­ing al­le­ga­tions is not the same as ad­ju­di­ca­tion, and con­text not yet pub­lic may be rel­e­vant.

High­light­ing the CCJ Agree­ment, Vieira ex­plained that while the pres­i­dent has sig­nif­i­cant ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, case out­comes are de­ter­mined by the ma­jor­i­ty of judges hear­ing them.

“The mere al­ter­ation of a pan­el can­not, with­out more, es­tab­lish ‘pan­el fix­ing.’ Crit­i­cal ques­tions in­clude why a pan­el was con­sti­tut­ed or al­tered, what rules ap­plied, and whether any de­ci­sion was mo­ti­vat­ed by an in­ten­tion to in­flu­ence the re­sult,” he said.

He in­sist­ed that Jus­tice An­der­son must be af­ford­ed the same pro­tec­tion from pre­judg­ment as any lit­i­gant be­fore the court.

Vieira out­lined two di­men­sions of the cur­rent dif­fi­cul­ty: whether any con­duct re­quires for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and whether work­ing re­la­tion­ships have bro­ken down. He rec­om­mend­ed con­fi­den­tial me­di­a­tion or fa­cil­i­tat­ed di­a­logue by an in­de­pen­dent fig­ure of ex­cep­tion­al stand­ing to re­store trust and col­le­gial­i­ty among judges.

“Me­di­a­tion isn’t an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Its pur­pose is to re­store a func­tion­ing col­le­giate re­la­tion­ship and en­able judges to agree on clear pro­to­cols,” he said.

If cred­i­ble al­le­ga­tions re­main un­re­solved, Vieira said the CCJ Agree­ment pro­vides rig­or­ous process­es through the Re­gion­al Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion, which ap­points judges and ex­er­cis­es dis­ci­pli­nary con­trol, and through pro­ce­dures for pos­si­ble re­moval of the pres­i­dent.

“There should be no rush to con­demn Jus­tice An­der­son. Equal­ly, con­cerns re­port­ed­ly ex­pressed by five dis­tin­guished judges can­not re­spon­si­bly be dis­missed. Both propo­si­tions can be true at the same time,” Vieira said.

He con­clud­ed that any weak­ness­es in gov­er­nance arrange­ments should be cor­rect­ed, while the court’s in­tegri­ty and achieve­ments must be pre­served.