Orville Taylor | Questionable Council (QC): Not a PC

Hers is a neater fit, because there is no dissonance between her anachronistic suffix and the equally ludicrous stance of holding on to the drawstrings of Her Majesty. Senior attorney for whom I have the utmost respect, Valerie Neita Robertson, succeeded in obtaining the acquittal of her client before the final appellate court for the independent nation of Jamaica, the Britain-based Privy Council (PC). Convicted in the first-instance trial and the judgment upheld by our Court of Appeal, Neita’s client, a former member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, was finally exonerated by the PC.

A senior citizen myself, her utterance can easily be understood as a bit of pre-geriatric exuberance, given the magnitude of the victory. Having rubbed shoulders with lawyers for decades, it is not difficult to comprehend her being caught up in the moment. Thus, while I agree that “justice has no colour, no race and no nationality”, presumably because of the incongruity with the official stance of her People’s National Party, her declaration “… that we need to keep the Privy Council in Jamaica, so that we can be assured of justice in matters like this”, is repugnant.

Our brilliant friend and senior counsel Bert Samuels, a man who ‘fire bun’ on the QC title, has responded as an equal should. Unlike the typical member of the profession who use the term ‘learned’ gratuitously to describe even the least intellectually endowed among them, Bert probably has more sense, than the standard five. Like him, I am deeply unnerved by a less than subtle suggestion that our Jamaican or regional justice system is incapable of delivering high-quality results and totally agree that being “forever stuck with the Privy Council, is flying in the face of Garvey’s caution that, ‘If we, as a people, realised the greatness from which we came, we would be less likely to disrespect ourselves’.”

EMINENTLY QUALIFIED

Indeed, having gone to high school with the chief justice (CJ), university with many of the high court judges, and even taught at least one, and being an educator at the university level for more than 30 years, I am in at least as good a position as Samuels to echo that, “…we celebrated 50 years since our three regional law schools have been turning out fine lawyers”. In fact, it follows the logic that Neita Robertson herself is more than eminently qualified to be have been a high court judge three decades ago. She is so competent and knowledgeable, that the very PC agreed with her.

Yet, there is a profound danger in the suggestion that because a superior court dismisses a judgment of the lower one, it means that there is something insidious about the courts themselves or their members. Higher courts are there precisely because only God makes no error. Law is not science and unlike the physical or even the predictive social sciences, at best, the result of a trial with arguments by bright and erudite minds is 50 per cent ‘accurate’.

But that is the nature of law and justice. Any system where a litigant has a ‘guarantee’ of a specific outcome, is corrupt and the influence truly ‘extra-judicial’. As a matter of fact, there is a half chance that a Caribbean Court of Justice with local jurists like Neita and Samuels themselves would deliver the same verdict.

True, there have been some strange ones, with both bench and jury trials over the years; and Samuels, Neita and her colleague in the matter of Patrick Atkinson, QC, can attest to some of their very cases going against the public sentiments or external logic. Such is the nature of law. Although as a democracy, we must allow the public to give dissenting views, there is no basis to denigrate the system. Neita has come close to that line here.

ONE OF THE LEAST CORRUPT

Doubtless, our judges are imperfect. Indeed, I have met at least one who must have retired with excess capacity on his brain hard drive. But he is anomalous. Based on the 2014 Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), Jamaican judiciary is one of the least corrupt in the world. Some six per cent of Jamaicans, measured by the same research instrument and team from Transparency International (TI), indicated in 2013 that they have paid a bribe to the judiciary. My lawyer colleagues have been pusillanimous about it, but I have been the lone wolf in media and academia taking this on. Then again, not being a member of the court, I understand that dogs neither have the same luck nor can they see whole thing from the same perspective.

For me, TI’s GCB validates Samuels’ and my stance, because 15 per cent of Americans reported having bribed judges and 21 per cent of British residents did the same. Indeed, the current mountain surrounding the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US Supreme Court makes the minor impasse regarding the confirmation of CJ Bryan Sykes between 2017 and 2018 look like a pimple on an elephant’s butt.

For good measure, selection of judges in more than half of American states is just like regular political elections with campaigning and all the trappings. The appointment of Privy Councillors pales in comparison to the transparent process of installing Jamaican judges.

Sorry counsel! No more PC for this canine.

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.