The issue of trust has become central to the controversy engulfing the Caribbean Court of Justice. The court has been rocked by a major internal dispute stemming from the leak of private judicial correspondence and disagreements over a dress code for judges.
Political scientist Professor Hamid Ghany says the public fallout does not bode well for the institution’s reputation.
“This is a matter of grave concern because this is not how courts usually operate. Courts don’t operate in a manner whereby you have judges sort of duking it our in public with one another and making alll the kinds of allegations and statements that are being made, which really could have been resolved behind closed doors. And the public would never know that all of this is going on. It goes to the heart of confidence and trust in the court because it his highly unusual for judges to behave in this way.”
Noting that only five CARICOM countries have the CCJ as their final court of appeal, Professor Ghany indicated that the dispute is ill-timed.
“So this episode, coming as it does, when it does, when it has emerged, is not going to provide or inspire any public confidence that this is the kind of court that we want to move from the Privy Council to adopt this. And I think that a lot of repair work and damage control has to be done now.”
Professor Ghany noted that Jamaica’s ongoing republican debate remains divided on adopting the CCJ as its final court of appeal, adding that the current controversy does little to inspire confidence in the institution.