CCJ not ideal final court for Jamaica

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I am writing with reference to the article, ‘Not a good look,’ published in The Gleaner on January 22.

The Constitution of Jamaica requires a constitutional referendum in order to remove Jamaica’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council appellate court and replace it with the Caribbean Court of Justice appellate court.

Twelve Commonwealth Caribbean nations prime ministers or presidents signed the agreement on February 14, 2001 to establish the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), and on April 16, 2005, the CCJ commenced operations.

This included Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. As of January 22, neither Jamaica nor Trinidad and Tobago have CCJ as their final appellate court.

At present the CCJ receives cases from its appellate jurisdiction from Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana and St Lucia. This is only 42 per cent of the 12 countries have replaced their final appellate courts with the CCJ appellate court, after being operational for almost 20 years. In addition, all of these countries did not hold constitutional referendums to remove the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but parliamentary elections.

Finally, the CCJ is still evolving, and is not the ideal final court of appeal for Jamaica at this time.

CARGILL KELLY