The failures of CARICOM have become so notorious that talking about them incites more contemptuous laughter than lawyer jokes. And there’s probably no greater monument to these failures than the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which was established in 2001 to replace the Privy Council as our regional judicial tribunal of last resort.
Establishing the CCJ codified the natural desire of CARICOM’s newly independent member states to cut the final umbilical cord of British colonialism.
Therefore, it is stupefying that only two of them, namely Barbados and Guyana, have actually severed this cord and embraced the untethered independence that they all yearned for so proudly. Indeed, given that enlightened Jamaicans proposed this liberating cut as early as 1970, the fact that even they have not followed through reflects an habitual suckling on the colonial tit that is as judicially infantile as it is politically hypocritical.
It’s no wonder we are now faced with the humiliating spectacle of Lord Nicholas Phillips, president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, giving us, in effect, a public spanking for failing to assume ultimate responsibility for our own judicial affairs.
Specifically, in a recent interview with the Financial Times, Lord Phillips lamented that the five British judges who sit on the Privy Council spend 40 percent of their time adjudicating cases from the former colonies. And he indicated – with forlorn hope – that he wished these now-independent countries:
“... would stop using the Privy Council and set up their own final courts of appeal instead.”
Of course you’d think that Lord Phillips’ admonition – that it’s high time we take care of our own judicial mess – would cause any self-respecting Caribbean leader to feel not only (duly) chastened but also determined to relieve Britain of this “white man’s burden”, which is plainly anachronistic, untenable and unfair. Never mind that Lord Phillips is not admonishing us to do anything we haven’t known for almost 40 years that we should, indeed must, do.
Yet all indications are that it’s going to take a far sterner rebuke than this polite kiss-off to get Caribbean leaders to do the right thing. And nothing demonstrates this quite like the clueless and hopelessly solicitous reaction of the deputy prime minister and attorney general of The Bahamas, Hon. Brent Symonette:
“It may be that one course of action may be to limit the (number of) appeals from the Court of Appeal to the Privy Council – that might be an alternative.”
Mind you, this is not to say that the CCJ is the only real alternative. In fact, the jingoistic politics that have made CARICOM such a dysfunctional laughing stock actually militate against member states turning to this regional court as a replacement for the Privy Council.
Accordingly, we may find that the only viable alternative is for each CARICOM country to simply establish its own Supreme Court. To be sure, this would be an ironic default outcome; after all, a judiciary with a final court of appeal at its apex is a hallmark of any independent nation.
In any case, it is immature, irresponsible and, frankly, niggardly for Caribbean leaders to have relied all these years on our former colonial master to fulfill this essential function of our national self-determination.
At long last CARICOM Heads, have you no shame?! Caribbean Net News

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