A Caribbean court
Editorial
The leaders of Caricom have moved one step closer to a Caribbean Court of Justice, an issue that was being discussed even before Caricom was formed twenty-five years ago. The communique of the recent heads of government summit in Trinidad and Tobago states rather blandly that the heads approved the agreement to establish the court and mandated the setting up of a committee comprising the attorneys general of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago assisted by the chief parliamentary counsel and the supreme court registrars and representatives of the Council of Legal Education and the Caricom Secretariat to develop a programme of education about the court and to inaugurate the court prior to the establishment of the single market and economy. The court will be the final court of appeal for all the territories who sign the agreement. It is hoped to sign the agreement in October and those likely to sign at the outset are Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The court will also have an original jurisdiction in matters connected with the interpretation of the Caricom treaty. There will be nine judges selected from the territories involved and a president of the court. There will be a regional judicial service commission presided over by the president of the court. The agreement to set up the court was ready and could in principle have been signed at the recent summit if the preparatory work had been done. Constitutional amendments are required. In Barbados Mr Owen Arthur's government has an overwhelming majority in parliament and the amendment will present no problem. In Guyana the support of the PNC will be required in parliament. Given the party's ongoing commitment to regional integration one does not see this being a problem though the government should certainly raise the issue with the PNC at the earliest opportunity and introduce the law to add the new court, perhaps as Article l24A of the Constitution. Prime Minister Panday says he had discussed the matter with opposition leader Manning who supports the court. While Prime Minister Patterson of Jamaica may have the necessary majority in parliament he would much prefer to have opposition leader Eddie Seaga on board for political reasons. Traditionally, in Jamaica and Trinidad, the Bar Associations and other bodies have argued strongly for retaining the appeal to the Privy Council and were sceptical of the likely independence of a local or regional court as a final court. Dr Fenton Ramsahoye had raised the same point in a J.O.F. Haynes memorial lecture here where he argued at length what he saw as the defects of the present system in Guyana and the advantages of having an appeal to the Privy Council. This attitude is still strongly held in Jamaica. We have had our own final court of appeal since 1970. Many lawyers have been sceptical of the outcome over the years in cases that involved the government, particularly in the Burnham era. But the argument is that the regional dimension will make interference by individual governments most unlikely. A prime minister from territory X would hardly have the temerity to seek to influence a judge from territory Y. The idea of a regional court is more than overdue. It is time that a regional jurisdiction was established in which the best legal minds from all the territories will have the chance to lay a solid foundation for regional jurisprudence. It will also give the region another important institution as it moves towards a single market and economy. The court will be based in Trinidad but will also be able to sit in other territories. The preparatory committee will have to work out the logistics (e.g. will the judges live in Trinidad) and the expense and how this will be borne. Do we dare to hope that the necessary steps will at last be taken by the governments and the agreement will be signed in October? Or will it be delayed again as so many other Caricom projects have been over the years?
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