To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The war of words be­tween Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is un­for­tu­nate, trag­ic even, as it comes at a time when both men should be fo­cus­ing all of their en­er­gies on im­prov­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

In­stead of col­lab­o­rat­ing to im­prove the speed and qual­i­ty of the coun­try's civ­il and crim­i­nal tri­als, these ex­em­plars of our le­gal sys­tem have opt­ed to be­come em­broiled in a puerile squab­ble about su­per-grade hous­ing and whether the pre­vi­ous At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had too much in­flu­ence on the ju­di­cia­ry. It is doubt­ful that many mem­bers of the pub­lic will ever know what ill breeze pos­sessed Min­is­ter Vol­ney, a for­mer High Court judge, to use his speak­ing time in last week's bud­get de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to launch a com­plete­ly un­war­rant­ed, and per­son­al, at­tack on the Chief Jus­tice.

Mr Vol­ney's ques­tion­ing of the fact that Chief Jus­tice Archie chose to oc­cu­py a state-owned man­sion in Good­wood Park, which there is no doubt that he is en­ti­tled to, would have been wide­ly per­ceived as be­ing the jeal­ous rant­i­ng of a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer who had been by­passed for pro­mo­tion on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. Giv­en the fact that the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion gives judges the right to chose a res­i­dence pro­vid­ed by the State or a hous­ing al­lowance, Mr Vol­ney did him­self no favours by de­scend­ing in­to the gayelle to speak about a for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al un­der­min­ing the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry and about a "sweet­heart deal."

The breath of a babe in arms would have been enough to de­mol­ish Mr Vol­ney's ar­gu­ments. The fact that the Chief Jus­tice opt­ed to sum­mon a hur­ri­cane to bat­ter Mr Vol­ney in­to sub­mis­sion when a ba­by's breath would have been as, if not more, ef­fec­tive is to be re­gret­ted. In the Chief Jus­tice's state­ment, there were ref­er­ences to Mr Vol­ney's "mis­chief," to his "brash­ness and rep­re­hen­si­ble con­duct" as well as his "scan­dalous vi­tu­per­a­tion" and there was a warn­ing to Mr Vol­ney "that his loose­ness with re­spect to the ju­di­cia­ry will not re­main un­chal­lenged, and that every av­enue will be pur­sued to en­sure rem­e­dy for any sul­ly­ing of the char­ac­ter of the Ho­n­ourable the Chief Jus­tice or any oth­er mem­ber of the court."

It must have been a sad day when the Chief Jus­tice–so high­ly re­gard­ed for his sober and rea­son­able tone and his calm in­tel­li­gence–was put in a po­si­tion where he felt, even af­ter a pe­ri­od of re­flec­tion, that he had to is­sue a cau­tion that he would pur­sue "every av­enue" to pro­tect his rep­u­ta­tion. That it came to this may have been as a re­sult of the Speak­er al­low­ing the MP for St Joseph a lit­tle too much lat­i­tude on his maid­en con­tri­bu­tion to the cur­rent Par­lia­ment. Even though he is new to the job, House Speak­er Wade Mark is an old hand at par­lia­men­tary prac­tice–hav­ing served in the Sen­ate for years. Mr Mark should have stepped in to stop Mr Vol­ney as soon as it be­came clear that he was re­fer­ring to a mem­ber of the ju­di­cia­ry–and in the con­text, the ref­er­ence to "the one in the ex­alt­ed of­fice" was quite ex­plic­it. Par­lia­ment's Stand­ing Or­ders, in ef­fect the rules of pro­ce­dure for the Low­er House, make it clear that while Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment re­ceive pro­tec­tion for the words they ut­ter with­in the in­sti­tu­tion, they are not giv­en un­tram­melled free­dom.

MPs are re­strict­ed from com­ment­ing on pend­ing ju­di­cial de­ci­sions and they are not al­lowed to im­pute im­prop­er mo­tives of any oth­er Mem­ber. And MPs are al­so for­bid­den from ques­tion­ing the con­duct of judges or oth­er peo­ple en­gaged in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice "ex­cept up­on a sub­stan­tive mo­tion moved for the pur­pose; and in any amend­ment, ques­tion to a min­is­ter, or de­bate on a mo­tion deal­ing with any oth­er sub­ject any ref­er­ence to the con­duct of any such per­son as afore­said shall be out of or­der."

In terms of a way for­ward, giv­en the ex­tent of his calum­ny, it is clear that for Mr Vol­ney to con­tin­ue as a min­is­ter he will have to is­sue an apol­o­gy that is ac­cept­able to the Chief Jus­tice, who holds the third high­est of­fice in the coun­try. There is a clear sense that bring­ing the Chief Jus­tice in­to the cut and thrust of the hot­house of lo­cal po­lit­i­cal pi­cong ex­ceed­ed even T&T's no­tably lax sense of pro­pri­ety.