Jamaica closer to replacing Privy Council with Caribbean Court of Justice

The Portia Simpson-Miller administration in Jamaica says debate on the 3 bills allowing for the island-nation to adopt the Trinidad & Tobago-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to replace the London-based privy council, will be debated in the Senate on October 16.

According to the Leader of Government Business in the Senate, A.J. Nicolson, the debate, “is the most important and far-reaching and will be of equal importance to the Independence Debate in 1962, which dealt with the proposal for a new Constitution for independent Jamaica.”

The bills to be debated are:

– An Act to Amend the Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) Act, which seeks to amend the Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) Act, to repeal provisions for appeals to the Privy Council, and exclude any appeals to the Privy Council instituted prior to implementation of the Caribbean Court of Justice;

– An Act to make provisions for the implementation of the agreement establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice, as both a court of original jurisdiction to determine cases involving the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and International treaties, as well as a superior court of record with appellate jurisdiction; and,

– An Act to Amend the Constitution of Jamaica to repeal provisions relating to appeals to the Privy Council, and replace them with provisions establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice as Jamaica’s final court, which requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

The bills spent more than the required 3 months on the table of the House, after being laid in July 2012, and another 3 months after the conclusion of that debate in May.

The Caribbean Court of Justice was established in 2001 to replace the London-based Privy Council as the region’s final court, but while many of the Caribbean countries have signed on to the Court’s Original jurisdiction, only Barbados, Guyana, Belize and Dominica are signatories to the Appellate Jurisdiction.