CCJ president: Less intimidating court setting can be useful

The moot is similar to a mock trial, but the students present their cases to the judges in the absence of a jury and other elements of a real-life trial.

Friday’s session pitted legal teams from the University of the West Indies Mona campus against students from the St Augustine campus; a team from the University of Guyana against one from the University of Technology in Jamaica; another from the Hugh Wooding Law School arguing against a team from the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill; and a team from the Eugene Dupuch Law School in The Bahamas against one from the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica.

Byron regretted that he could not announce that more Caricom states had abandoned the Privy Council in favour of joining the CCJ in its appellate jurisdiction as the final court of appeal of the region. He said the number of countries which had so far adopted the CCJ as their final court of appeal remains four: Barbados, Belize, Dominica and Guyana.

In fact, he said a referendum last November in Grenada on that island’s joining the court ended in a loss by about 3,000 votes out of 23,177, and while those who did not support the court interpreted this as a “rebuff ” to the CCJ, and more “evidence” of its unfitness to replace the Privy Council, the CCJ did not see it in the same way, interpreting the outcome of the referendum as an incitement to work harder to make the court more attractive to the Caribbean region.

“We understand that the most effective way to neutralise that is through good performance. We understand that only by demonstrating what we are worth — and that we are worth a great deal — that we will woo a majority of support to our side.”