JAMAICA | The Privy Council was never intended to remain Jamaica’s Final Court of Appeal Says Patterson

KINGSTON, Jamaica, June 7, 2024 - Former prime minister P.J. Patterson said the framers of Jamaica’s constitution  never intended to have the British Privy Council remain as Jamaica’s highest Court of Appeal, hence it was never deeply entrenched.

Addressing a forum at the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Mr. Patterson said both Norman Manley and Sir Alexander Bustamate had not subscribed to the   “retention of an Apex Court created to maintain the cause of the British Empire through which it would  maintain its dominion by way of the Privy Council as the final determinant of our legal rights.”

Mr. Patterson, Jamaica’s sixth and longest serving prime minister, had an insider's position at the creation of the Jamaican constitution.

He noted that with the dissolution of the West Indies Federation, the Federal Court would automatically be dissolved. It was therefore decided as a temporary measure, to retain the Privy Council until such time as the Final Caribbean Court would be established.

Hence "Our Founding Fathers envisaged the establishment of a Caribbean Court at the apex.

This, he said, should remain a settled national position and should not be subverted  because of political expediency, which has now emerged as a partisan divide," Patterson lamented.

“Not one single valid ground had been advanced as to why this vestigial colonial institution should remain,” Mr Patterson declared.

He said if  Sir Alexander Bustamante was not convinced that it was a temporary measure, “he would have insisted on the deep entrenchment of the Privy Council.” 

Mr. Patterson said the proposal to establish a Caribbean Court of Appeal, emanated from a recommendation by the Officers of the Caribbean Commonwealth Bar Association in 1970 and was approved at a meeting Chaired by Jamaica’s prime Minister Hugh Shearer.

In 1987 at a meeting of  the Caribbean Heads of Government in Antigua, attended by Jamaica’s Prime Minister The Most Hon. Edward Seaga, it was decided by the Heads, that in order to avoid the option of a mere transitional involvement of Caribbean jurists in the Privy Council, they  would take immediate steps towards “the expeditious establishment of a Caribbean Court as the final Appellate Court for English speaking Caribbean countries.”

The meeting empowered the  Regional Attorneys General, which included Jamaica’s Ossie Harding, KC, to  create the draft framework for the now Caribbean Court of Justice, CCJ.

He explained that the Judicial Privy Council, based on submissions, accepted that the final court would be simply entrenched to allow its removal by a two-thirds vote of both houses, and no referendum would be required.

The former Jamaica Prime Minister said it was important the CCJ not only be established, but also be seen as an itinerant court fashioned by the Caribbean people for which Jamaica has paid their full share and the Court  has  passed the ten year test with flying jurisprudential colours.

He said “It is high time to remove the incongruity of His Majesty’s Judicial Privy Council being the final legal repository which interprets our Constitutional and fundamental rights when the Monarch is no longer even a figment of our social reality.”

“62 years after our Independence, it is more than overdue for Jamaica to depend no longer on an Order in Council, to abolish the Monarchy and to vest the judicial arm with the full authority to dispense justice for all; to develop a Caribbean jurisprudence,” Mr. Patterson pointed out.

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