Ten years ago on this day, just over a month af­ter cel­e­brat­ing his 48th birth­day, Ivor Archie de­liv­ered his first ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the law term as this coun­try's Chief Jus­tice.

Archie had been ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion on Jan­u­ary 24, 2008, cre­at­ing his­to­ry as the youngest per­son to have as­sumed that po­si­tion in T&T.

His ap­point­ment to the post came at a time when his pre­de­ces­sor as this coun­try's sub­stan­tive Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma had evad­ed im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings.

Archie de­fend­ed Shar­ma's lega­cy in that open­ing ad­dress:

"First, of course, is Chief Jus­tice Shar­ma who re­tired in Jan­u­ary of this year. I would not wish the con­tro­ver­sy that marked his last years at the helm to de­tract from the con­tri­bu­tion he made dur­ing a long ju­di­cial ca­reer. Dur­ing his time on the bench he de­liv­ered a num­ber of land­mark de­ci­sions and his tenure at the helm of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice fea­tured such mile­stones as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new Rules of the Supreme Court, the in­tro­duc­tion of Au­dio Dig­i­tal Court Re­port­ing, the ac­qui­si­tion and re­fur­bish­ment of a num­ber of new ju­di­cial fa­cil­i­ties and the in­tro­duc­tion of the Fam­i­ly Court Pi­lot Project among oth­ers. His cham­pi­oning of the is­sue of the mod­ern­iza­tion of the Mag­is­tra­cy was a clar­i­on call that led all the ef­forts to bring the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in­to the 21st Cen­tu­ry. We wish him good health and a long and hap­py re­tire­ment."

Now as the ju­di­cia­ry pre­pares to cel­e­brate the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the 2018-2019 law term, Archie's 11th at the helm, his lega­cy al­so seems to be un­der threat.

The past two years have been a tur­bu­lent one for Archie with sev­er­al per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al is­sues com­ing to the fore re­sult­ing in some of his se­nior staff be­ing di­vid­ed over his lead­er­ship.

The lat­est chal­lenge to his lead­er­ship oc­curred in Ju­ly be­fore the High Court went on va­ca­tion when two High Court judges, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad and Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, ac­cused Archie of abus­ing his pow­er by is­su­ing a press re­lease via the Ju­di­cia­ry in re­sponse to a pri­vate mat­ter he cur­rent­ly has be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

Archie’s use of his of­fice in this pri­vate mat­ter has been deemed “in­ap­pro­pri­ate and un­ac­cept­able” by the judges.

How­ev­er, in re­sponse to con­cerns raised, Archie told his sub­or­di­nates that their time would be more pro­duc­tive­ly em­ployed at­tend­ing to their own jobs and al­low­ing him to at­tend to his.

The lat­est tiff be­tween Archie and his sub­or­di­nates came fol­low­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s de­ci­sion to re­serve its judg­ment in the mat­ter of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (Latt) ver­sus Archie to a date to be de­ter­mined.

This con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie arose late last year in a se­ries of news­pa­per re­ports which ac­cused him of at­tempt­ing to per­suade judges to change their state-pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty in favour of a pri­vate com­pa­ny where his friend and con­vict­ed fraud­ster Dil­lian John­son worked. Archie was al­so ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to fast-track Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ap­pli­ca­tions for his friends.

Archie on­ly re­spond­ed to the al­le­ga­tions once, where he de­nied dis­cussing judges’ se­cu­ri­ty but ad­mit­ted to sug­gest­ing peo­ple for HDC hous­ing. Archie has re­peat­ed­ly re­fused the as­so­ci­a­tion’s re­quest and calls from col­leagues to di­rect­ly re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions since then.

In No­vem­ber last year, the Coun­cil of Latt called on Archie to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tion that he dis­cussed the judges’ se­cu­ri­ty with a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual. The as­so­ci­a­tion’s coun­cil then ap­point­ed a sub-com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions and sought the le­gal ad­vice of two em­i­nent Queen’s Coun­sel to de­ter­mine if the al­le­ga­tions were suf­fi­cient to trig­ger im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Archie is cur­rent­ly chal­leng­ing the Latt mat­ter at the Privy Coun­cil.

The Latt had pre­vi­ous­ly passed a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against Archie for his bungling of the ap­point­ment of for­mer Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar to the post of a High Court judge, which al­so re­sult­ed in le­gal ac­tion be­ing tak­en.

Eight years ago a cho­rus of dis­sen­sion be­gan to rise up

Eight years ago on this day when a cho­rus of dis­sen­sion be­gan to rise up against Archie as he used his ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the law term to take aim at his naysay­ers.

"I am con­scious that with­out my de­lib­er­ate­ly set­ting out to have that ef­fect, some peo­ple may be a lit­tle of­fend­ed by things I have to say, but by the most gen­er­ous of reck­on­ings I am more than halfway through my life and my tenure now, and I have come to that age and qui­et pass in life where I lose no sleep. In a coun­try where the na­tion­al pas­time is tear­ing each oth­er down, I have no dif­fi­cul­ty re­mind­ing my­self and every oth­er leader that our job is to lead and the job of talk show hosts is to talk. And as for so­cial me­dia com­men­tary, why waste en­er­gy?

"Last year I talked about com­mon sense. There is some­thing else that is in equal­ly short sup­ply, and that is the vi­sion. By de­f­i­n­i­tion, those who pos­sess and de­ploy it will be the mi­nor­i­ty in every so­ci­ety. Chick­ens will scratch on the ground mak­ing noise over scraps and will al­ways out­num­ber the ea­gles that have the ben­e­fit of a dif­fer­ent and broad­er per­spec­tive. With that ben­e­fit comes the bur­den of be­ing mis­un­der­stood and crit­i­cized, and the high­er the ea­gle soars, the small­er it seems to the chick­en. I can’t make ea­gles out of chick­ens"

"All of those of us who are in lead­er­ship po­si­tions must seek con­sen­sus and try to help oth­ers to un­der­stand and em­brace the vi­sion, and that in­volves ex­pla­na­tion, con­sul­ta­tion and some­times per­sua­sion, but at the end of the day, as Pro­fes­sor Liv­er­pool said in an­oth­er song, the dri­ver must dri­ve and every­body else must ei­ther push, sit tight or get off the bus!"

When Archie de­liv­ered his ad­dress at the open­ing of the law term last year he men­tioned the chal­leng­ing times he had to face dur­ing the year.

"The 2016/2017 term has been a chal­leng­ing one and there is no rea­son to be­lieve that 2017/2018 will be any dif­fer­ent. How­ev­er, in so far as we cre­ate the fu­ture that we in­hab­it by the choic­es we make, I face it with un­bri­dled op­ti­mism in our ca­pac­i­ty to over­come and to ex­cel, no mat­ter what comes our way," Archie said.

It will be all eyes on Archie as he de­liv­ers his eleventh ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the law term to­mor­row.

This year will al­so be Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes' first cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the law term since her ap­point­ment.

Weekes is not a stranger to the cer­e­mo­ny how­ev­er, af­ter hav­ing served in the ju­di­cia­ry for two decades.

Weekes re­tired from the Ju­di­cia­ry on Au­gust 31, 2016. She was ap­point­ed Pres­i­dent in March.