A forum on the Caribbean Court of Justice began earlier this evening
at the University of the West Indies Auditorium. Noted UWI Law Professors Simeon
McIntosh and Winston Anderson are presenting papers making the case for the
Caribbean Court of Justice. It’s a case and a cause that not many Caribbean
nations have been taking up – and Professor Anderson – who is the
Executive Director of the Caribbean Law Institute Center at UWI in Barbados
- says they hope to demystify the CCJ.
Prof. Winston Anderson, Executive Director – Caribbean Law Institute
“We want to achieve the purpose of demystifying what is required and
to demonstrate in fact that it is a fairly simple procedure for moving from
the Privy Council to the Caribbean Court of Justice, provided that the constitutional
requirements are satisfied and we don’t believe there are any insurmountable
difficulties in the way of satisfying those constitutional requirements. And
as I said my colleague Professor McIntosh will be speaking more in terms of
the philosophical reasons why it is so critical important that we own our jurisprudence,
that we own our own courts.
We just find it very mystifying as to why other countries have not signed
on, particularly because it is the case that these other countries are paying
for the court. The court is up and running and we have a situation where the
court is operating in Trinidad and Tobago, we have very eminent judges, very
respected judges – they are deciding one or two cases that come before
them. But the fact is that Belize is paying for them, Jamaica is paying for
this, Trinidad and Tobago – all the other countries in the region –
we are paying for this court and we’re not using the court.
But we think it is an opportune moment to dialogue with the new government,
to dialogue with other stakeholders in Belize to get a sense as to how quickly
we can move forward because this is something now that is past due, something
that I think should have happened many years ago and certainly something that
we hope that can happen in the very near future.
So we expect members of the legal fraternity to be here and we welcome
their presence. But equal if no more crucially we want to have a presence of,
for want of better words, ordinary Belizean people because this is in an attempt
to engage them in the process of discussing the court, discussing the existence
of the court, discussing the importance of the court and to have their views;
to solicit from them what they think about the future and then to answer any
kind of concerns that they may have as to how we go forward.”
Again the forum was scheduled to begin at the UWI auditorium at 5:30
this evening. For some context, the Caribbean Court of Justice is based in Trinidad
and was inaugurated four years ago. It is fully functional but only Barbados
and Guyana are using it as a court of last appeal.
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