KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For the fifth con­sec­u­tive year, Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­mained the coun­try with the high­est num­ber of ap­peals be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

Ac­cord­ing to the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed King­dom and the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil An­nu­al Re­port and Ac­counts 2025 to 2026, there were 36 cas­es from T&T, one more than the pre­vi­ous year.

Pre­vi­ous re­ports re­vealed that there were 14 cas­es in 2023–2024, 22 in 2022–2023 and 39 in 2021–2022.

How­ev­er, the Unit­ed King­dom’s high­est ap­pel­late court has iden­ti­fied sev­er­al long-term chal­lenges, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sures, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the court’s in­de­pen­dence and im­par­tial­i­ty, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty threats and a de­clin­ing num­ber of coun­tries us­ing it as their fi­nal court of ap­peal.

Those find­ings have reignit­ed de­bate over whether T&T should con­tin­ue re­ly­ing on the Lon­don-based court or make the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) its fi­nal court of ap­peal.

The de­bate comes as the role of the CCJ con­tin­ues to re­ceive re­gion­al at­ten­tion af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s chal­lenge to the process used to reap­point Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett will now be de­ter­mined by the CCJ, af­ter re­gion­al heads of gov­ern­ment agreed to seek an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from the court.

How­ev­er, the PM re­mains firm in her de­ci­sion that the CCJ will not be T&T’s fi­nal court of ap­peal any time soon.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, said he was hope­ful that this sit­u­a­tion would change one day.

He told Guardian Me­dia that while the is­sues iden­ti­fied by the Privy Coun­cil are sig­nif­i­cant, they are not, on their own, a rea­son for T&T to make the switch at this stage.

Khan said he has long sup­port­ed the CCJ, ar­gu­ing that the de­ci­sion to make it the coun­try’s fi­nal ap­pel­late court should be based on na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty rather than chal­lenges fac­ing the Privy Coun­cil.

In Khan’s view, both the Privy Coun­cil and CCJ are ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing jus­tice, but he does not be­lieve the push for the CCJ should be based on whether the Privy Coun­cil per­forms bet­ter or whether it faces fu­ture dif­fi­cul­ties.

Khan said, “I am al­ways for the CCJ, be­fore that re­port and al­ways af­ter that re­port. Yes, now the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion has been say­ing make the CCJ our fi­nal court of ap­peal... The on­ly rea­son we want the CCJ is not be­cause it’s bet­ter or be­cause the Privy Coun­cil may col­lapse or the Privy Coun­cil may say you go your own way. The on­ly rea­son we want it is be­cause we want to be to­tal­ly in charge psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and ac­tu­al­ly of our sov­er­eign state.”

He al­so called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ex­plain to the pub­lic her po­si­tion on whether now is the right time for T&T to adopt the CCJ as its fi­nal court of ap­peal.

Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Guyana and St Lu­cia are the on­ly Caribbean coun­tries which have the CCJ as their fi­nal ap­pel­late court. T&T con­tin­ues to use the Privy Coun­cil as its fi­nal ap­pel­late court, de­spite the es­tab­lish­ment of the CCJ here in Port-of-Spain in 2005 as a re­gion­al al­ter­na­tive.