Making a case for the CCJ

ROMAIN PITT Guest column

I hope everyone would support the CCJ. I was born in Grenada and took up permanent residence in Toronto, Canada when I was 19, so I do not pretend to be an expert on the Caribbean, but I know it pretty well because I visit regularly, follow developments there carefully and wish the best for it.

I understand the administration of justice because I practised law for 29 years, and sat on a Superior Court bench in one of the largest English-speaking courts, where I did trials, motions, applications, and appeals, for 16 years. During some of that period I served as a “team leader”, and therefore had some responsibility for administration.

Trial judges are the ones who decide what actually happened when a dispute is brought to the court for resolution. They are often described as “the finders of the facts”. It is they who decide whether a witness told the truth or not. They make a decision on the basis of the facts they have found, and must give reasons for their decision.

Probably 90 percent of cases end with them. Appeal judges (who sit in groups of at least 3 at a time) decide whether the trial judge made errors in law at the trial. Did the trial judge apply the correct legal principles to the facts they have found? The CCJ is primarily a Court of Appeal. The Privy Council is, of course, also a Court of Appeal.

The Privy Council is made up of judges who sit in the House of Lords. That is why they are called Law Lords. That expression is not to be taken as meaning that they are “the lords of the law”. I have found it very difficult to understand why so many people oppose the CCJ as the final court of appeal for the region.

I cannot take seriously the suggestion that the highest Caribbean judges will be more corrupt or more susceptible to political influence than English judges or simply less capable. While it may be true that the administration of justice is inefficient in the region that is not an argument against the CCJ; and what is more I can`t think of a country where the efficiency of the administration of justice is not a live issue.

That is partly because it is a very hard issue and enough financial resources are not expended on it because politically it is not seen as very “sexy”. Finally, I think there is a serious misconception about the degree of arbitrariness involved in the judicial process. Judges are governed by laws (statutes and precedents), and obviously by a fierce desire to distinguish themselves by being legally right in their decisions.

This last consideration will be especially significant at a court at the Apex, as will be the CCJ The region cannot be composed of colonies forever, and that is exactly what rejection of the CCJ will mean; and what is more the British do not want the job anymore.