Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed law to al­low judges from Com­mon­wealth ter­ri­to­ries is gross­ly un­fair to lo­cal at­tor­neys who as­pire to be judges and it’s al­so an in­sult to judges who can han­dle spe­cial­ist cas­es as well as any Com­mon­wealth judge, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Sophia Chote has said.

Chote ex­pressed the view at yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate ses­sion in de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions Bill de­signed to in­crease judges from 49 to 64. It al­lows judges from the Com­mon­wealth to prac­tice in T&T. Chote said while she may be speak­ing to “deaf ears”, she had to de­fend T&T’s Bar on the is­sue.

Say­ing Gov­ern­ment wasn’t just open­ing the door to Com­mon­wealth judges, it was “blow­ing the door open,” she felt the pro­vi­sion would cre­ate in­equal­i­ty for lo­cal prac­ti­tion­ers.

“We’re cre­at­ing an un­equal sys­tem which will fos­ter in­equity be­tween our own peo­ple— our at­tor­neys— and their ca­pac­i­ty to be am­bi­tious to want to be a judge— we’re treat­ing them less gen­er­ous­ly than peo­ple of oth­er Com­mon­wealth coun­tries,”

She not­ed that Caribbean ju­rispru­dence had evolved with its own iden­ti­ty and in­de­pen­dence par­tic­u­lar­ly for in­de­pen­dent states like T&T.

The Coun­cil of Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ed this. Yet 56 years af­ter T&T’s in­de­pen­dence, the pro­posed law would say who will ad­ju­di­cate, she said.

Chote not­ed a re­mark by Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Garvin Si­mon­nette who’d cit­ed Ghana and Nige­ria as po­ten­tial sources of Com­mon­wealth judges for T&T. “If that’s be­ing con­tem­plat­ed as a po­ten­tial source for Com­mon­wealth judges, we need to look at their ju­rispru­dence sys­tems to see whether they are in line with T&T’s and they’re not,” she added.

“This (leg­is­la­tion) is a bad idea since we have our own ju­rispru­dence and unique ju­di­cial and le­gal ties — enough to cre­ate a Caribbean Court of Jus­tice — but we’re tak­ing a step back­ward in bring­ing peo­ple who aren’t qual­i­fied in the way they should be, to be judges here.”

She said the sys­tems of Ghana and Nige­ria were more in line with In­dia and Pak­istan’s whose ju­rispru­dence sys­tem were al­so not a good fit for T&T.

She not­ed Ghana, Nige­ria, In­dia, Pak­istan and Guyana al­so don’t utilise the Privy Coun­cil and their sys­tems have de­vel­oped with­out that fac­tor, though Caribbean sys­tems use the Privy Coun­cil.

“So there’s a dis­par­i­ty be­tween the ju­rispru­dence knowl­edge of peo­ple who’ve prac­ticed in those coun­tries as op­posed to T&T and oth­er re­gion­al states.”

Chote said on­ly three uni­ver­si­ties pro­vide law de­grees like UWI’s — in­clud­ing on con­sti­tu­tion­al law — but oth­er in­sti­tu­tions don’t give stu­dents the ground­ing they need to be cer­ti­fied to prac­tice in T&T and to be a judge here.

Not­ing Nige­ria and Ghana set up spe­cial courts to deal with fi­nan­cial cas­es and sex­u­al of­fences Chote felt the pur­pose of the pro­posed T&T law was to set up courts to deal with such is­sues al­so.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al- Rawi said that wasn’t con­tem­plat­ed by Gov­ern­ment.

Chote de­bunked the view that she was re­ject­ing the sit­u­a­tion be­cause of judges from Nige­ria and Ghana.

“The same prob­lems ap­plies for Cana­da,” she not­ed.