No swearing-in in treaty

THE EDITOR: In a newspaper of Sunday August 24, 2003 the Chief Justice of Barbados, Sir David Simmons, is reported as saying that “he did not want to dignify the comments of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago” on the legitimacy of the swearing-in of members of the Regional Judicial and Legal Service Commission. If that remark attributed to Sir David was in fact made by him it provides yet another example of some of the region’s judge’s intolerance of dissenting views and lack of humility. It makes one wonder again whether we can find enough persons with the kind of judicial attitude to which we should like to see exhibited on the bench of the final Court of Appeal, the Caribbean Court of Justice.

In any event I have looked at the treaty referred to by Sir David on the website. It makes no reference of swearing-in of members of the RJLSC nor does it provide for delegation of functions of the heads of judiciary by them in relation to the members of the RJLSC. Why, I ask, the show of a swearing-in!

JAMES WILLIAMS
Maraval