Profile of the Caribbean Court of Justice.

• Author: Pollard, Duke E.E.

The CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) creates an extensive range of rights and obligations for states party to the treaty .and, through these states, for community nationals. These rights and obligations are so important and extensive that there is a clear need to have a permanent, central, regional institution to make authoritative and definitive decisions about them.

The original Treaty of Chaguaramas, which established CARICOM, provided for arbitration in the event of disputes concerning the interpretation and application of the treaty. Unfortunately, the arbitral procedure was never used and serious disputes were never settled. Because the revised treaty requires a uniform interpretation and application of its provisions, 12 of the 15 CARICOM countries--Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines--have signed the Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). By interpreting and applying the treaty that establishes the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, the CCJ will have a decisive role in how the CSME functions.

The CCJ was inaugurated on April 16, 2005 at Queen's Hall in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago. The judges of the Court are President Michael de la Bastide of Trinidad and Tobago and six judges: Rolston Nelson of Trinidad and Tobago; Duke Pollard and Desiree Bernard of Guyana; Adrian Saunders of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Jacob Wit of the Netherland Antilles; and David Hayton of the United Kingdom. Three other judges remain to be appointed.

The establishment of the CCJ is certainly a landmark event in the history of the Caribbean. However, its gestation dates back to 1901 when an editorial published in the Jamaican Gleaner suggested the need for a regional court of last resort to replace the London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which was the final court of appeals for all the Commonwealth Caribbean countries before their independence from the United Kingdom.

The idea was raised again in 1947 at a meeting of regional decision-makers in Barbados and further advanced when the Representative Committee of the Organization of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations (OCCBA) recommended in its 1972 report the establishment of a Caribbean Court of Appeal to substitute the Privy Council. The OCCBA also recommended that the proposed Court of Appeal "be vested with an original jurisdiction in respect of matters referred to it by agreement between the Caribbean States or any two or more of them arising out of such original treaties as the CARIFTA Agreement (Caribbean Tree Trade Agreement) or by the Council of the Area or such matters as the interpretation of the Agreement."

The next significant step towards the formation of the CCJ was taken when the West Indian Commission--established in 1989 by the CARICOM Heads of Government--recommended the establishment of the Caribbean Supreme Court to replace the Privy Council. The West Indian Commission also recommended that the proposed Caribbean Supreme Court have an original jurisdiction in order to interpret and...