An out­spo­ken at­tor­ney has called on the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to in­ves­ti­gate con­cerns over the Ju­di­cia­ry’s on­go­ing COVID-19 pro­to­cols re­cent­ly raised by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in.

In a let­ter sent to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Sophia Chote, SC, on Mon­day evening, at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh re­ferred to ex­cerpts of a re­port in Mon­day’s edi­tion of the T&T Guardian on Jus­tice Gob­in’s con­cerns, which were con­tained in cor­re­spon­dence sent to Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie last week.

Tak­lals­ingh said: “As such, if a judge, par­tic­u­lar­ly a se­nior judge, has ex­pressed the view that her in­de­pen­dence or the in­de­pen­dence of the bench is be­ing threat­ened then it is a mat­ter for which the Law As­so­ci­a­tion should anx­ious­ly scru­ti­nise and in­ves­ti­gate thor­ough­ly.”

Tak­lals­ingh, who req­ui­si­tioned a re­cent spe­cial meet­ing for the as­so­ci­a­tion’s mem­ber­ship to de­bate a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, which was even­tu­al­ly nar­row­ly de­feat­ed, stat­ed that Jus­tice Gob­in’s con­cerns were not mere­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive.

He not­ed that Jus­tice Gob­in’s work as a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer would no doubt be af­fect­ed if she was in­deed de­prived of her staff and ac­cess to court build­ings as al­leged.

“In­deed, if there ex­ists a class of ad­min­is­tra­tive staff that pur­port to ex­er­cise pow­er, which col­lide with the ju­di­cial func­tions of our judges, then it is my hum­ble opin­ion that the source of pow­er must be iden­ti­fied and its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty test­ed in the high­est ju­di­cial form,” Tak­lals­ingh said.

He al­so claimed that the se­lec­tion process and cri­te­ria for such of­fice hold­ers should be trans­par­ent and open to pub­lic scruti­ny.

Tak­lals­ingh not­ed that Jus­tice Gob­in’s re­quest to CJ Archie for dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the Ju­di­cia­ry’s Med­ical Re­sponse Team (MRT) and the pol­i­cy im­ple­ment­ed by it was rea­son­able and should be sup­port­ed by the as­so­ci­a­tion.

“I close by re­spect­ful­ly re­mind­ing you that the cost of our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms is eter­nal vig­i­lance; democ­ra­cy can die through a sin­gu­lar cat­a­clysmic event or by a thou­sand cuts,” Tak­lals­ingh said.

Jus­tice Gob­in’s let­ter to CJ Archie came af­ter the Ju­di­cia­ry closed in-per­son op­er­a­tions at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain be­tween last Tues­day and this Mon­day.

Al­though the Ju­di­cia­ry is cur­rent­ly on its an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, some judges such as Jus­tice Gob­in have been as­signed to pre­side over emer­gency cas­es, with some judges elect­ing to con­tin­ue their work dur­ing the pe­ri­od to en­able them to utilise their va­ca­tion at a dif­fer­ent time.

Jus­tice Gob­in’s con­cerns were sup­port­ed by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad, who called for a meet­ing be­tween CJ Archie and Supreme Court Judges to dis­cuss the is­sues.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Jus­tice Gob­in had not re­ceived a re­sponse to her let­ter up to late yes­ter­day.