Sad­ly, dead­line is­sues con­spired to ex­clude per­son­al re­flec­tions on yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ni­al sit­ting of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) at Queen’s Hall, Trinidad, to ho­n­our the ser­vice of out­go­ing pres­i­dent of the Court Jus­tice Adri­an Saun­ders.

Jus­tice Saun­ders, who demits of­fice on Ju­ly 3, has been a mem­ber of the court since its very first sit­ting 20 years ago and has been at the helm for the past sev­en years.

He is a na­tive of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and is of­ten re­ferred to as a “home-grown” Caribbean ju­rist, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from the UWI Cave Hill cam­pus in Bar­ba­dos in 1975 and the Hugh Wood­ing Law School in T&T in 1977.

Get­ting to know him at the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el about ten years ago brought con­fir­ma­tion to re­cur­ring hearsay re­gard­ing his de­ter­mined com­mit­ment to Caribbean de­vel­op­ment and sov­er­eign­ty and his vast knowl­edge on mat­ters of law and jus­tice.

As a mere lay­man with an in­ter­est in such mat­ters, there have been few oc­ca­sions dur­ing which Jus­tice Saun­ders, even in ca­su­al in­ter­per­son­al “obiter dic­ta”, has not pro­vid­ed me and oth­ers around him with in­struc­tion on ques­tions of bal­ance, fair­ness, and ac­cu­ra­cy.

These qual­i­ties, of course, were al­so habits of the pre­de­ces­sors I came to know, in­clud­ing one past pres­i­dent who sum­moned me to his cham­ber over what he as­sessed to be an in­ac­cu­ra­cy sur­round­ing the sta­tus of the CCJ Trust Fund–a unique fi­nan­cial mech­a­nism de­signed as in­su­la­tion against ar­bi­trary be­hav­iour by con­tribut­ing na­tions.

De­spite this, there are mem­bers of the le­gal pro­fes­sion and politi­cians here and in our re­gion who per­sist with silli­ness over the per­ceived vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the court to parochial fi­nan­cial whim.

It should al­so not be that mil­lion­aire ad­vo­cates with big na­tion­al and re­gion­al rep­u­ta­tions are cor­re­spond­ing­ly con­fused about or ig­no­rant of the work and sta­tus of the Re­gion­al Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (RJLSC), which pre­sides over the in­de­pen­dent ap­point­ment of CCJ judges.

Some of these peo­ple some­times scour so­cial me­dia pages and posts and even con­tribute to rel­e­vant on­line con­ver­sa­tions but nev­er at­tempt to cor­rect re­peat­ed pub­lic ig­no­rance and fol­ly sur­round­ing the court.

It is al­so patent­ly un­true to as­sert that “Trinidad and To­ba­go NOT in de CCJ” de­spite its head­quar­ters be­ing sit­u­at­ed in Port-of-Spain. I have heard this too many times. This is a non­sense built in­to po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tives par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­pres­sive of a lack of sup­port for the CCJ in its dis­crete role as a court of fi­nal ap­peal.

For the ben­e­fit of pro­po­nents of such con­fu­sion, the CCJ is ac­tu­al­ly a hy­brid in­sti­tu­tion serv­ing both as a “mu­nic­i­pal court of last re­sort”—its ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion–and as an “in­ter­na­tion­al court vest­ed with orig­i­nal, com­pul­so­ry and ex­clu­sive ju­ris­dic­tion in re­spect of the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas”.

In fact, this coun­try has been the sub­ject of the largest share of cas­es be­fore the CCJ with re­spect to its “orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion” role. The last T&T-re­lat­ed judg­ment came on Oc­to­ber 22, 2024 (a “CLI­CO” case), and the first one in­volved Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd in Ju­ly 2008.

It is al­so not wide­ly ac­knowl­edged (or per­haps known) that the CCJ is an itin­er­ant court–mean­ing it can con­vene hear­ings in any of the sig­na­to­ry coun­tries.

The ques­tion of the ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion of the court has al­so been sub­ject to a va­ri­ety of non­sens­es. The fund­ing is­sue and judge se­lec­tion have been ad­dressed high­er up. Don’t just take it from a jour­nal­is­tic “bush lawyer”, look it up.

But what of the eth­nic make­up of the CCJ bench? This is among the more egre­gious­ly in­sult­ing ob­ser­va­tions about the Court made by those who have most like­ly not con­duct­ed a cor­re­spond­ing head­count in oth­er apex ju­ris­dic­tions, in­clud­ing the one of their own lu­cra­tive choice.

This year, the court marks 20 years since its in­au­gu­ra­tion on April 16, 2005. Jus­tice Saun­ders is to be suc­ceed­ed next month by Jus­tice Win­ston An­der­son—an­oth­er com­mit­ted re­gion­al­ist with dual Bar­ba­di­an/Ja­maican na­tion­al­i­ties.

He was found­ing chair­man of the CCJ Acad­e­my for Law in 2010 and, through his work as a pan­el­list con­tribut­ing more than once to the work of the Me­dia In­sti­tute of the Caribbean (MIC) in our jour­nal­ism train­ing, is clear­ly com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing knowl­edge not on­ly of how sys­tems of law and jus­tice work but al­so about the place of the CCJ in Caribbean life.

Even in the ab­sence of the ide­ol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy of­ten cit­ed in sup­port of an in­dige­nous apex ju­ris­dic­tion and most of the coun­ter­vail­ing silli­ness and ig­no­rance, a ra­tio­nal de­bate can be en­gaged on the mer­its and de­mer­its of a CCJ. I am yet to wit­ness one.