SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Two High Court Judges re­ceived their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment to the Ap­peal Court yes­ter­day from Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes yes­ter­day.

Jus­tice Gillian Lucky and Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Amor­er joined the Court of Ap­peal af­ter a brief cer­e­mo­ny at the Pres­i­dent’s House, in Port- of- Spain

In of­fer­ing her con­grat­u­la­tions to her for­mer col­leagues, Weekes said the oc­ca­sion was a very spe­cial one to her.

“I sup­pose if you have a for­mer judge as Pres­i­dent, it is like­ly to hap­pen, in pre­sent­ing in­stru­ments such as these to what would be for­mer col­leagues and friends,” she said.

Weekes said she knows the ca­pac­i­ty for hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of both women and be­lieves both will con­tin­ue to serve with the same vigour.

She said the ap­point­ments of Lucky and Dean-Amor­er were ea­ger­ly await­ed by oth­er judges on the Ap­pel­late Bench.

“I know that the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion as it op­er­ates will be very hap­py to re­ceive Jus­tice Lucky with a wealth of knowl­edge in the field of crim­i­nal law, and the civ­il di­vi­sion to wel­come Madam Jus­tice Dean-Amor­er, some of the judges have al­ready spo­ken to me and I don’t want to say that they are sali­vat­ing but let me just say that they ea­ger­ly await your ar­rival and the acu­men, the abil­i­ty and the hand­work you will bring to the Ap­pel­late Bench.”

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, in his re­marks, said al­though on­ly two judges were be­ing sworn in, all five to fill va­can­cies at the Ap­peal Court have al­ready been se­lect­ed.

Archie said ap­pli­cants were re­quired to sev­er­al phas­es in the ap­pli­ca­tion process be­fore be­ing in­ter­viewed by the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion. He said ap­pli­cants were al­so re­quired to com­plete a psy­cho­me­t­ric as­sess­ment.

Archie said eight of the orig­i­nal 20 ap­pli­cants met all the cri­te­ria for ap­point­ment and five were se­lect­ed from that eight.

“Af­ter re­view­ing all el­e­ments of the process, the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion felt con­fi­dent that it had the best can­di­dates in or­der to ad­vise her Ex­cel­len­cy on the fill­ing of the ap­point­ments,” Archie said.

He said the three out­stand­ing va­can­cies will be filled dur­ing the law term as the oth­er three suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al time to ful­fil their ex­ist­ing com­mit­ments to the High Court.