B’dos AG: 84 percent want C’bbean Court

Most people in the Caribbean, 84 percent, support a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) which is due to be functioning in Port-of-Spain by year-end, revealed Barbados Attorney General and Deputy Prime Minister Mia Mottley. The CCJ will adjudicate disputes over the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (its “original” jurisdiction) and will replace the British Privy Council as our highest court of appeal (its “appellate” jurisdiction). Mottley was speaking as chairperson of the CCJ Preparatory Committee at a news conference yesterday at Crowne Plaza attended by several Caricom attorneys-general including TT Attorney General Glenda Morean. The law ministers yesterday discussed documents to establish the US$100 million Trust Fund whose annual interest would fund the running of the CCJ in perpetuity, guaranteeing its independence and sustainability. Mottley said Caribbean persons had urged a local regional appellate court since colonial days, and that support for the CCJ had recently leapt from 64.8 percent in 2000 to 84 percent in 2002. She said that while the CCJ was being set up, British Prime Minister Tony Blair had recently proposed to abolish the institution of the Law Lords and the Lord Chancellor, a move she said would have implications for the Privy Council.  Rather than wait in dusty corridors for this outcome she said, Caribbean states had gone ahead with the CCJ to establish full political and legal sovereignty.

Mottley said: “The United Kingdom wants to establish its own Supreme Court...They have taken a decision to go where we have gone since Independence.” She was unperturbed by CCJ member states which domestically had not yet approved the court’s appellate jurisdiction, saying there would still be time in the future to do so.  She said Barbados had passed enabling legislation, which she said would be proclaimed for the opening of the CCJ. Mottley said the CCJ would give justice to people who might not otherwise be able to financially afford to access the British Privy Council. While its headquarters are in Trinidad she added, the CCJ will be an itinerant court moving from country to country, and like the Privy Council it would be able to adjudicate on matters in different types of legal systems in the region. Mottley expressed full confidence that the CCJ would be served by capable judges, saying: “The Caribbean has a distinguished history of citizens serving at the highest levels on international tribunals.” She added that advertisements to recruit CCJ judges would be placed throughout the whole Commonwealth to avail the CCJ of the world’s best brains and to develop a judicial system relevant to the political, social and cultural needs of the people of the Caribbean.