Derek Achong

New­ly ap­point­ed Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) Judge Pe­ter Ja­madar has en­cour­aged his for­mer col­leagues to be imag­i­na­tive and cu­ri­ous in ex­e­cut­ing their du­ties.

Speak­ing at a spe­cial sit­ting of the Court of Ap­peal to com­mem­o­rate his re­tire­ment af­ter 22 years in the Ju­di­cia­ry and his re­cent el­e­va­tion to the CCJ, Ja­madar re­vealed that his cu­rios­i­ty on the ap­pro­pri­ate bal­ance be­tween ju­di­cial con­ser­vatism and ac­tivism helped shaped some of his well-known de­ci­sions on con­tro­ver­sial is­sues af­fect­ing so­ci­ety.

Ja­madar said: "If the law is to be rel­e­vant and made ef­fec­tive, and if jus­tice to be done for all man­ner of per­sons, ju­di­cial of­fi­cers have to be able to imag­ine what is pos­si­ble. There­fore this a call for imag­i­na­tive and cre­ative cu­rios­i­ty in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the law."

How­ev­er, he was care­ful to note that his sug­ges­tion did not give judges the "sub­jec­tive li­cence to do what one wants".

"Rather it is an in­vi­ta­tion for the em­ploy­ment of rig­or­ous le­gal analy­sis which in­cludes in­ter-dis­ci­pli­nary thoughts and so­cial con­text con­sid­er­a­tions to give birth to the po­ten­tial of the law to meet the needs and de­mands of jus­ti­fi­able rights and en­ti­tle­ments," Ja­madar said. He re­ferred to his judge­ments in a case which led to the Trin­i­ty Cross be­ing re­named as the Or­der of T&T and an­oth­er which af­firmed the abil­i­ty of lawyers to wear Nehru suits for court hear­ings.

In jest, Ja­madar ad­mit­ted that some of his col­leagues were not en­thused by his cu­rios­i­ty es­pe­cial­ly when they worked to­geth­er on ap­peal pan­els.

"No one would hear the sighs and see the rolling eyes when I would be ask­ing the ques­tions," Ja­madar said, as he sig­nalled Ap­pel­late Judge Nolan Bu­reaux as a ma­jor of­fend­er.

"Even though ide­o­log­i­cal­ly we may be dif­fer­ent, I have learned from him (Bereaux)," he said.

Dur­ing his speech, Ja­madar al­so en­cour­aged young judges to lis­ten to con­struc­tive crit­i­cism.

Ja­madar re­called an in­ci­dent when Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who was a young at­tor­ney at the time, ap­proached him and in­formed him that fel­low lawyers were re­fer­ring to him as "Judge Dread" as they thought he had changed his per­son­al­i­ty when he left pri­vate prac­tice.

Ja­madar thanked Young, who was present for the hear­ing, as he claimed that the in­ci­dent made him in­tro­spect.

"Judges are not in­fal­li­ble. I was not. But judges can learn to be bet­ter judges but they must be pre­pared to re­ceive hon­est feed­back, to em­brace it and to grow out of it," he said.

In his ad­dress dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Ap­pel­late Judge Al­lan Men­don­ca, who spoke on be­half of the Ju­di­cia­ry, com­mend­ed Ja­madar for eru­dite judge­ments and for his work as chair­man of the Ju­di­cia­ry Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tute.

Men­don­ca al­so praised Ja­madar's sem­i­nal pa­per on the need for sab­bat­i­cal leave for lo­cal ju­di­cial of­fi­cers as he said it was in­flu­en­tial in con­vinc­ing the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) to open the door to the fa­cil­i­ty, five years ago.

"Judges have not yet en­gaged that but it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore they do," Men­don­ca said.

Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dou­glas Mendes, Se­nior Coun­sel Ian Ben­jamin and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi all paid trib­utes to Ja­madar, who took up his new po­si­tion on Mon­day.

They al­so ex­pressed hope that this coun­try would, soon­er rather than lat­er, make the CCJ its fi­nal court of ap­peal.