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Sunday, July 13, 2025

The CCJ —a court for the people

by

Dr Ronald Sanders
2505 days ago
20180903

www.sir­ronald­sanders.com

Through­out the 185-year his­to­ry of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the British Privy Coun­cil, it has nev­er pro­vid­ed ac­cess for peo­ple of lit­tle means ex­cept for a few per­sons on death row who got free le­gal ser­vice from British lawyers.

This stands in stark con­trast to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) where, in the three years fol­low­ing its in­cep­tion in 2005, civ­il ap­peals out­num­bered crim­i­nal ap­peals by al­most sev­en to one. About 15 per cent of the civ­il cas­es filed in the CCJ were from per­sons too poor to pay fil­ing costs which the court waived, giv­ing poor peo­ple un­prece­dent­ed ac­cess to ap­peals.

These cas­es have in­clud­ed: a prop­er­ty dis­pute be­tween two poor ten­ants, a pub­lic hous­ing agency’s con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion to a sig­na­to­ry’s next of kin, the ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of a po­lice of­fi­cer’s tes­ti­mo­ny in a case of child mo­lesta­tion, and a civ­il ser­vant’s dis­missal through the statu­to­ry abol­ish­ment of his ap­point­ment. There have been oth­ers. Im­por­tant­ly, these cas­es came from on­ly four coun­tries that had signed-up to the CCJ as their fi­nal ap­pel­late court. They would have been much more nu­mer­ous if all the peo­ple of Cari­com had ac­cess to the CCJ.

As a Court of fi­nal ap­peal in crim­i­nal and civ­il mat­ters, the CCJ is tru­ly a peo­ple’s court.

An au­thor­i­ta­tive study, con­duct­ed by An­drew N Ma­hara­jh and pub­lished by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, analy­ses the costs in­volved in ap­peal­ing to the Privy Coun­cil in con­trast to the CCJ. The find­ings show over­whelm­ing­ly that the CCJ is much more ac­ces­si­ble to the less well-off than is the Privy Coun­cil, re­in­forc­ing that the CCJ is as much a peo­ple’s court as it is a fi­nal ar­biter for wealthy busi­ness per­sons and gov­ern­ments.

For in­stance, the study finds that “the cost of fil­ing an ap­peal with the Privy Coun­cil is more than five times greater than fil­ing an ap­peal with the CCJ. A com­par­i­son of oth­er as­so­ci­at­ed fil­ing costs for both courts re­veals a sim­i­lar ra­tio”. Oth­er big ex­pens­es are in­curred to take a case to the Privy Coun­cil. Per­sons mak­ing an ap­peal have to buy plane tick­ets for them­selves and their lo­cal lawyer and find and hire an Eng­lish li­censed so­lic­i­tor to pre­pare the case file; in some cas­es, they must al­so re­tain ex­pen­sive British bar­ris­ters. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cost of ac­com­mo­da­tion in Lon­don for the du­ra­tion of the lit­i­ga­tion has to be met. In any event, two sets of lawyer’s fees must be paid. Ac­cord­ing to the study, all of this pro­duces a very ex­pen­sive ap­peals process, es­ti­mat­ed at an av­er­age min­i­mum cost of US$65,000.

Clear­ly, out­side the reach of any but the wealthy.

By con­trast, over­all costs of ap­peals to the CCJ are con­sid­er­ably cheap­er. There is no need for two sep­a­rate sets of lawyers, a lo­cal law firm can ap­pear be­fore the CCJ; costs of trav­el to Trinidad, the seat of the Court, is cheap­er than to Lon­don; the CCJ is al­so a trav­el­ling Court, there­fore there might be no need for lawyers to trav­el. Most im­por­tant­ly, the CCJ al­lows lawyers to ap­pear from their homes or of­fices via its video con­fer­enc­ing fa­cil­i­ties. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the CCJ op­er­ates an e-fil­ing sys­tem to re­ceive and process all fil­ings elec­tron­i­cal­ly, elim­i­nat­ing the cost for lawyers’ trav­el and ac­com­mo­da­tion and, there­by, the over­all cost to the lit­i­gants.

If all Cari­com states took ad­van­tage the CCJ as a fi­nal court of ap­peal, not on­ly would wealthy per­sons and gov­ern­ments have ac­cess to the court, but or­di­nary peo­ple, across the re­gion, would en­joy con­sid­er­ably bet­ter ac­cess to jus­tice than they do now. So­cial equal­i­ty in the jus­tice sys­tem would, at last, be served.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, all Cari­com tax pay­ers have al­ready paid for ac­cess to the more af­ford­able CCJ.

Every Cari­com gov­ern­ment has con­tributed from its tax rev­enues to the Trust Fund that in­de­pen­dent­ly fi­nances the Court. There­fore, cur­rent­ly, the peo­ple of eight Cari­com coun­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly the less well-off, are be­ing de­nied ac­cess to an af­ford­able jus­tice sys­tem for which they have paid—it is a peo­ple-as­set from which the peo­ple are blocked.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, as an ex­am­ple, over the last 28 years, 1990 to 2018, on­ly 37 ap­peals have been made to the Privy Coun­cil from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, one of the coun­tries that is still tied to the British Privy Coun­cil. Of the 37 ap­peals, sev­en were crim­i­nal and 30 were civ­il. In the clear ma­jor­i­ty of civ­il cas­es, on­ly big com­pa­nies and the gov­ern­ment were in­volved, pre­cise­ly be­cause on­ly they can af­ford the costs in­volved in ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil.

Poor An­tiguans and Bar­bu­dans, like their peers in oth­er Cari­com coun­tries, sim­ply can­not af­ford the costs.

By the same to­ken, less well-off per­sons, from the four Cari­com coun­tries that are part of the CCJ ap­pel­late process, have utilised the Court which has fa­cil­i­tat­ed the ap­pli­ca­tions of the poor­est even in civ­il cas­es.

What then of the qual­i­ty of jus­tice that the CCJ de­liv­ers?

The judg­ments of the Court have been wide­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed. They are all avail­able on the Court’s web­site for pub­lic scruti­ny. Each of the Judges of the Court is high­ly re­spect­ed by their peers in the glob­al ju­di­cial sys­tem. It should be re­called that the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean has been pro­duc­ing lawyers, ex­pert in many fields, for over a hun­dred years. Those lawyers have served in many ca­pac­i­ties in the re­gion and the world and have con­tributed enor­mous­ly to in­ter­na­tion­al ju­rispru­dence.

The Judges of the British Privy Coun­cil al­so gave great ser­vice to the de­vel­op­ment of law in Com­mon­wealth coun­tries and be­yond for which they are com­mend­ed. But, they do not pos­sess the in­fal­li­bil­i­ty with which they are dec­o­rat­ed by those in our re­gion who cling to them. Their de­ci­sions have been re­peat­ed­ly over­ruled by both the Eu­ro­pean Court of Jus­tice and Eu­ro­pean Court of Hu­man Rights.

The Judges of the CCJ are, at the very least, the equals of the British Privy Coun­cil. And, as the facts bear out, the CCJ is the Caribbean peo­ple’s court as much for the poor as the rich.


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