LAW ASSOCIATION ON CCJ

The Law Association’s contention that the establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) was under serious threat and could be the first fallout from the current maritime dispute between Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados ignores the precedent set by Europe, which had been plagued for centuries by hostilities between Member States. And this in no way posed any serious threat to the European Union and its crucial institutions one of which is the European Court of Justice. Yet despite two World Wars in the last century, each of which had its genesis in Europe, European countries were able to put their differences aside, and 12 years after the end of World War 11 structure and sign the 1957 Treaty of Rome, forerunner to the European Uinon. Admittedly it took many years to accomplish, but it did happen.

The establishment of the ECJ would have been made that more difficult than say the Caribbean Court of Justice, not only by the age old hostilities between Member States, but by the wide differences in their political and legal systems. Meanwhile, the Caribbean Court of Justice if its role is to be meaningful, will not simply be there as the final Court of Appeal for individuals, firms or of matters brought against them, but like the European Court of Justice for the resolutions of disputes between Member States. The maritime dispute between Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados centred around the 1990 Delimitation Treaty between this country and Venezuela, and which Barbados has taken before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for resoultion, is comparatively minor. Certainly, it is no where as critical as the wars between the United Kingdom and France, or the ranging of the two countries in armed conflict against Germany and vice versa, or of Napoleonic France against the rest of Europe.

Yet they have come together under the umbrella of the European Union (EU), and despite this we have seen where two antagonists in World War 1 and 11, France and Germany bonded together less than a year ago to oppose military intervention in Iraq by one of the EU’s Member States, the United Kingdom, which had allied itself with the United States of America for the invasion of Iraq in defiance of the United Nations. Admittedly, closer cooperation between Germany and the rest of Western Europe, which had been brought to the fore in 1955, through Germany’s joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, for example, had come about because of the perceived need by the West to form a common front against an old ally of France and the UK in the war against Germany — the then Soviet Union. Today, there is a need in the Region to firm up an alliance against globalisation, which is clearly inimical to the agricultural and small manufactures interests of Member States of the Caribbean Community of Nations. Any failure to establish the Caribbean Court of Justice will impact negatively on the ability of CARICOM to set up a Caribbean Single Market and Economy and with it their social and economic interests.

The argument advanced by the Law Association, as articulated by its President, Mr. Karl Hudson-Phillips, that “the hasty approach by Barbados to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for resolution of a dispute between Member States of CARICOM is indicative of the lack of confidence in the leaders of our countries to successfully deal for themselves with disputes between their countries” does not necessarily follow. This does not mean that we are not still opposed to the manner in which the action was taken by Barbados. We maintain, however, that if former combatants in Europe, who had set out in two World Wars and several other wars to destroy each other’s economy and infrastructure, and the basis of whose wars had been largely economic, could later come together in the European Union to defend mutual interests, we should not so easily despair of achieving closer Caribbean union and with it the Caribbean Court of Justice.