Justice is Justice, seen or perceived as, or not, but if not so seen or perceived by those seeking it in courts of law, that’s a big problem.
It’s like medicine, with some doctors swearing if you don’t believe a prescribed tablet or liquid will work, it most likely won’t because of your mental or psychological rejection.
Not a lawyer or doctor, I can only go by what I’ve seen and heard during my not-so-short professional career since 1976 and from what I’ve learned along the way about Caribbean people’s general perceptions of Justice.
But from what I’ve seen in four-and-a-half decades following cases at home and abroad, between the West Indies and The Caribbean, (one can say) it’s not for nothing that it’s taking so-long for the remaining Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member-states to also make their common and shared Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) their Final Appellate Court.
Responses and attitudes can be measured at three main levels — Lawyers, Politicians and ‘The People’.
By virtue of the virtual DNA makeup of their trade, lawyers will naturally trade arguments based on points of law from the same books to agree and disagree (and agree to disagree) on whether Justice can be better delivered for Caribbean People by Caribbean Judges in Caribbean Courts.
The 21st Century opened with a greater level of acceptance of the CCJ among the current generation of young Caribbean lawyers, but not among governments where decisions are made more on the basis of what’s convenient, or considered best ‘for the moment’, or ‘for the time being…’
But even in the four CARICOM nations that have taken steps to make the CCJ their Final Appellate Court, responses to its decisions are not always based or judged by the layman or everyone on the legality of the judgment, but more on reasons less associated with right and wrong.
Whether a CCJ decision overrules a local court or annuls General Elections results, the responses are less based on what The Law says and more on implications for the parties concerned, especially if Governments or political parties are involved.
The linguistic ‘legalese’ of sophisticated judicial arguments about elasticity of law across jurisdictions normally tends to sideline ‘The People’ to whom Justice is to be served – and likewise with the layman’s laying-to-waste of arguments for and against the CCJ, simply because they feel they have enough reason to say they just don’t ‘trust’ lawyers.
Whether it be Roe v Wade or Caribbean Joe v West Indian Doe, ordinary plaintiffs and respondents normally become just names for future citations of precedence.
CCJ rulings, though published and available to all Caribbean media houses, often don’t get reported until and unless considered ‘newsworthy’ enough, leaving the readers and viewers the CCJ is supposed to serve to settle for the interpretations and misinterpretations of lay reporters and editors.
Established media houses often have access to legal opinions on matters of national or regional import, but in most cases, coverage is more on the dollars-and-cents size of costs awarded than on the common-sense aspect of how they will affect Society thereafter.
Caribbean People’s general and ordinary perceptions of Law and Justice are still regrettably generally limited to whether they personally know or know-of the litigant(s) or interested in non-legal aspects of the case, their judgment of the judicial judgments therefore mainly guided by the nature of their interest in the personalities or other peculiarities involved.
There are also the The People who either don’t trust or can’t afford lawyers, but will dare to pursue their cases on their own, eventually dying feeling The Law is either just not on their side, or always on the side of those who can afford the ‘best’ lawyers.
Take the celebrated case of a Saint Lucian litigant who spent a lifetime – from Colonialism to Independence — pursuing a case against a lawyer who claimed to have purchased his mother’s property (a large estate) through a Deed of Sale signed by her, but on a date long after she died.
The case dragged on in-and-through the local courts for decades and was ended in a district court by a magistrate from a neighboring island-state who had to daily depend on a Court Translator’s interpretations of the predominant (then unwritten) national creole language.
The popular plaintiff was eventually declared a ‘Vexatious Litigant’ – meaning (in lay language), he was wasting the court’s time.
The matter has/had its origins in the mid-1960s and it drew some high-profile Pro-Bono interest by at least three top local lawyers for the plaintiff, whose case was against the lawyer who originally signed the deadly deed and the defendant, the latter also a high-profile local lawyer and politician, who also happened to be a government leader for most of the time the related cases were heard.
The plaintiff at one point called a press conference (with his three lawyers) to outline why he’d decided to take the case to the British Privy Council, where he felt the judges would not be afraid to rule against a head of government, but he too would die without living to see his wish for Justice to be delivered by Justices sitting in London.
Such cases may be rare, but though old, they underline some types of bases for expressed doubts or refusals to accept that Caribbean judges are able to deliver Justice, based on law, equal to or better than their British peers.
The extent to and speed at which CARICOM and the CCJ can make a sufficiently-convincing case in the Court of Public Opinion to correct that longstanding expression of lack of confidence in regional judges, will determine how fast the remaining ten CARICOM Governments decide to join the Appellate Jurisdiction of the regional court which their predecessors all agreed to establish on February 14, 2001 and formally established exactly 17 years ago, on April 16, 2005.