A local final appellate court?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The recent public lament of the chief justice and the president of the Court of Appeal concerning the woeful state of Jamaica's courthouses ought not simply to be ignored by the government.

The concerns serve to highlight the debilitating effect on the proper administration of justice, and are not mere statements; they are telling reminders that the court buildings islandwide do not belong to the present age.

Should their Lordships' public observations not concentrate the minds of government leaders on how that prevailing state of affairs squares with the absolutely impractical proposal of the creation of a local final appellate court to replace appeals to the Privy Council?

The Jamaica Labour Party leadership has employed calculated strategies to hinder the legislative approval that is needed for all Jamaican citizens, not only the wealthy, to be privileged to enjoy access to justice in their highest court of law.

Their latest, the proposal of a local final appellate court, calls for their urgent elucidation of how the authorities, under Jamaica's persistently challenging economic circumstances, will conceivably be positioned to afford the creation and appropriate operational upkeep of a state-of-the-art institution, globally accepted as in the case of the Privy Council or the CCJ.

While they will seize upon a plea of scarce financial resources as some measure of a mitigating factor in answer to the charge relating to the unacceptable state of the courthouses, they themselves, incredibly, choose to block the path of access to final justice from the CCJ, for which Jamaican taxpayers' dollars have been expended over two decades ago.

Lamentably, the constant cries of their Lordships and several others through the years have had no influence on those indefensible decisions inadvisedly taken by the present government leadership against the best interests of the people. 

 

CLAYTON MORGAN 

Attorney-at-law