CJ Archie’s call

CHIEF JUSTICE Ivor Archie’s renewed call for the judiciary to have financial autonomy is certainly a matter worth considering. Judicial independence is essential for the rule of law.

But the judiciary has more acute problems than just the matter of who controls its purse strings. It operates within a society and a criminal-justice architecture that has already overwhelmed it, regardless of how its money is being allocated and spent.

At the opening of the law term on Friday, the CJ raised the issue of financial autonomy.

But in theory, the judiciary already has a robust degree of control when it comes to its spending. In the annual budget, the judiciary falls under its own head, just behind the allocations for the President and the Auditor General. This is analogous to what pertains in relation to the police service, which is also separate from the executive branch.

Yet the overall level of spending is ultimately for the Ministry of Finance, and thus the Cabinet, to approve. Further, if spending is to be transferred between areas of expenditure, this normally requires the approval of a minister. And given that a large portion of recurrent court expenditure is devoted to paying salaries and that recruitment formally falls under the independent public-sector regime, control is whittled away.

If we need a model for what judicial financial autonomy could look like, we need look no further than the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), headquartered here. A trust fund, into which member states put US$100 million back in 2001, generates the income needed to fund that court, to the tune of about TT$50 million per year. However, the CCJ’s caseload is arguably not comparable to the TT judiciary’s. Actual expenditure for the TT judiciary annually is around $500 million.

And not even this spending has been enough to make a substantial dent in the backlog of pending matters. A total of 1,278 cases remained pending at the Criminal High Court, 8,424 at the Family Court, 1,057 at the Children Court and 3,902 appeals at the Court of Appeal.

CJ Archie is correct to suggest giving the judiciary more control and allowing it to take on staff more directly might help to address the workload.

Yet as long as the murder rate continues to spiral, the detection rate remains low, police inefficiency remains significant, forensics remain log-jammed, and court procedure remains – notwithstanding innovations such as judge-alone trials and online hearings – beholden to archaic procedure, implementing reform of the courts’ finances is unlikely to yield a significant return on investment.

Unless, of course, that reform is part of something more sweeping and is as aggressive and comprehensive as the CJ himself would want it to be.

This is a matter the Government and Opposition must consider in their upcoming anti-crime talks.