Caribbean Times 99th Issue - Friday 23rd September 2016

12 c a r i b b e a n t i m e s . a g
Friday 23rd September 2016
CCJ: Ten years in
PART III: A Historical Background
By Michai Robertson
‘To Dwell Together In Unity’
Post-1992
Time for Action was an
essential precursory document
to ‘Regional Court
of Appeal’ or the ‘CAR-
ICOM Supreme Court’ as
they named it. This report
eloquently summarised and
brought together all the previous
arguments about the
court, and mirrors its current
manifestation as the CCJ.
The West Indian Commission
stated that,
the time is at hand for
establishing the Caribbean
Court of Appeal … We do not
wish to minimise the issues
which have characterised the
discussion; indeed we shall
address some of them; but
we are strongly of the view
we cannot, like characters in
a Chekhov play, go on sitting
around tables forever discussing
the pros and cons of
action and in the process forever
deferring it. We believe
the CARICOM decision was
the right one, even in the
context of an appellate jurisdiction
alone, but the case
for the CARICOM Supreme
Court, with both a general
appellate jurisdiction and an
original regional one, is now
over whelming – indeed it is
fundamental to the process
of integration itself.
The Heads of Government
upon hearing these
recommendations of the
West Indian Commission at
their Special Meeting of the
Conference in October 1992,
praised the Commission for
their ‘seminal’ work, and
agreed to ‘to pursue [these]
initiatives … with a sense of
urgency so that, by the end
of the decade of the 1990’s,
the West Indies would be
a more closely integrated
Community of sovereign
states, … [and called for] the
revision of the Treaty of Chaguaramas.’
They also noted
that ‘progress had already
Michai Robertson
been made’ in relation the
establishment of the court.
In 1995, three (3) years
after the Time for Action
report, the Conference of
the Heads of Government
continued its endeavour to
see the establishment of the
‘CARICOM Supreme Court’
within its proposed ten (10)
time period, by creating a
Committee to ‘prepare draft
Rules of the Court … in anticipation
of the establishment
of the Court.’
Three (3) years afterwards
in 1998 at their
Nineteenth Meeting, the
Conference of Heads of
Government, ‘adopted, in
principle, the Agreement establishing
the Caribbean Supreme
Court, under the new
appellation of the Caribbean
Court of Justice.’ It was also
at this Meeting that they declared
the CCJ ‘be invested
… with original jurisdiction’
for matters relating to the
Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas’
and acknowledged the
constitutional constraints
that Member States would
have to overcome in order to
initiate the CCJ’s final jurisdiction.
In 1999, the Heads of
Government ‘approved’ the
Agreement; called for the
establishment of the ‘Preparatory
Committee’ which
would plan and execute a
‘programme of public education’
about the CCJ for the
region and arrange the CCJ’s
inauguration prior to the creation
of the CSME; and it
was also expected to have its
seat in Trinidad and Tobago.
On the 14 th of February
2001, the Heads of Government
for the States of
Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados,
Belize, Grenada, Guyana,
Jamaica, Saint Kitts &
Nevis, Saint Lucia, Suriname,
and Trinidad & Tobago
signed the Agreement , while
Dominica and Saint Vincent
& the Grenadines signed on
the 15 th February 2003. The
CCJ was formally inaugurated
on the 16 th April 2005 in
Port of Spain, Trinidad.