Members of the Law Association are scheduled to meet today to discuss the organisation’s stance on replacing the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as T&T’s final court of appeal.
The association’s president Reginald Armour, SC, said the meeting would be held at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain, at 3 pm today to solicit the views from its membership on the long-standing issue.
“We think it is the opportune moment as the CCJ is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. We will look at the record of the court and the judgments it has produced and allow the members to tell us how they want to proceed on the issue,” Armour said during an interview on Monday.
Despite his reasoning for the meeting, several of the association’s members have stepped foward to criticise its handling of the issue and pro-CCJ stance of the resolution which the membership is being asked to vote on.
In a five-page letter sent to Armour on Wednesday, former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, SC, said the resolution should not be put to a vote as the association’s members were not properly consulted before it was prepared.
“The legal principles of consultation are well known, the basic standard requires that a consultation exercise should be conducted at a time when proposals are at a formative stage, with adequate information and time for proper and informed response leading to a conscientious and open- minded consideration of the relevant matters,” Maharaj said.
Referring to similar action in Jamaica, Maharaj noted that the Jamaican Bar Association had consulted with civil society groups in addition to its own members. Questioning the process used by the local association, Maharaj noted that previous executives had held seminars before formulating resolutions on other serious issues.
As he stated that replacing the Privy Council with the CCJ would require ammendments to the Constitution and national consultations by Government, Maharaj criticised the association for only facilitating voting at the meeting in Port-of-Spain.
“The obligation was on the council to have a fair decision-making process for such an important issue and it ought to have permitted contemporaneous voting in San Fernando and Tobago,” Maharaj said.
This country’s move towards the CCJ has been a burning topic since the court opened its headquarters in Port-of-Spain in 2005.
While the court is empowered to hear trade and immigration disputes against Caricom member states in relation to the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) under its original jurisdiction, only Barbados, Guyana and Belize has made it their final court of appeal for civil and criminal cases.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has repeatedly spoken out about her
Government’s intention to make the move but has suggested that the final decision can only be made through a national
referendum.