Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie wrote to Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona in No­vem­ber last year re­quest­ing the sab­bat­i­cal leave, in­di­cat­ing that he need­ed time to “rest, re­flect and un­der­take a pro­gramme of study that will have im­por­tant im­pli­ca­tions for the ju­rispru­dence of Trinidad and To­ba­go as well as oth­er Caribbean states.”

He ar­gued that “aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing in the par­tic­u­lar area of study that I pro­pose to un­der­take is al­most non-ex­is­tent.” He said the Fed­er­al Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Wash­ing­ton DC had ap­proved his ap­pli­ca­tion to be its vis­it­ing For­eign Ju­di­cial Fel­low for a pe­ri­od of up to six months.

By let­ter dat­ed No­vem­ber 6, 2017, the Di­rec­tor of In­ter­na­tion­al Ju­di­cial Re­la­tions Of­fice at the Fed­er­al Ju­di­cial Cen­tre Mi­ra Gur-Arie wrote to Archie in­form­ing him that his ap­pli­ca­tion to the cen­ter’s Vis­it­ing For­eign Ju­di­cial Fel­lows Pro­gram had been ac­cept­ed.

The pro­posed fel­low­ship she said for a pe­ri­od of 4-6 months be­gin­ning in March 2018 was “ac­cept­able.”

Two days lat­er Archie wrote to Car­mona seek­ing per­mis­sion to be out of the ju­ris­dic­tion for a six month pe­ri­od from March 11 to Au­gust 2018. By let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 5, Car­mona ap­proved the sab­bat­i­cal leave.

How­ev­er, it was on­ly when the re­quest to the PM was made by Pres­i­dent’s House to ap­point Jus­tice Alan Men­don­ca as the act­ing Chief Jus­tice for the six-month pe­ri­od that the PM be­came aware that the CJ would be out of the coun­try for the six-month pe­ri­od.

The PM wrote to Car­mona ask­ing for an­swers on his ap­proval of the sab­bat­i­cal leave.

On Mon­day in his re­sponse, Car­mona reaf­firmed his de­ci­sion. On re­ceipt of the re­sponse PM Row­ley in­formed the coun­try in a brief press re­lease that he was “ex­am­in­ing the sit­u­a­tion and will re­port to the coun­try in short or­der.”

SEC­TION 137 OF THE CON­STI­TU­TION

Un­der Sec­tion 137 (3), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has the pow­er to com­mu­ni­cate to Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona about in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether the judge/Chief Jus­tice should be re­moved from of­fice.

The process for im­peach­ment of a judge:

The Prime Min­is­ter refers a re­port of mis­be­hav­iour to the Pres­i­dent.

The Pres­i­dent calls a tri­bunal of em­i­nent judges to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tion.

The tri­bunal gets back to the Pres­i­dent with the re­sults of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion and, if nec­es­sary, a rec­om­men­da­tion.

Where nec­es­sary, the mat­ter is ei­ther han­dled im­me­di­ate­ly, or tak­en to the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee.

.If sus­pen­sion of the judge is re­quired, it is at the Pres­i­dent’s dis­cre­tion to re­voke the sus­pen­sion, act­ing on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

The last time sec­tion 137 was in­voked was in 2006 un­der de­ceased Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and in­volved then CJ Sat Shar­ma.

The Pres­i­dent ap­point­ed the three-mem­ber tri­bunal com­pris­ing Lord Mustill, De­nis Mor­ri­son and Sir Vin­cent Flois­sac to in­ves­ti­gate al­le­ga­tions of mis­be­hav­iour lev­elled against Shar­ma. The Mustil re­port cleared the CJ of any wrong do­ing.