Belize adopts Caribbean Court of Justice

Dean Barrow

The Senate meets in Belmopan this Tuesday and it is expected to ratify the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution that was passed by the House of Representatives last Friday. Of the three changes to the amendment package, government proceeded with the two less contentious. Firstly, it passed the Caribbean Court of Justice as the final appellate court for Belize to replace the Privy Council.  This means that Belize will be the third country in the region to adopt the CCJ; the two others being Barbados and Guyana even though twelve have signed on to the agreement.  Before the “ayes” at Friday’s House Meeting Prime Minister Dean Barrow responded to concerns raised within the legal community about pending cases set to be heard before the Privy Council. According to the PM, the law will not come into effect until those appeals are heard.

Dean Barrow, Prime Minister

“Where the replacing of the Privy Council with the CCJ is concerned, I had a letter from one attorney, Senator Eamon Courtenay actually, wanting to be sure that cases would not fall through the cracks in terms of the transitional situation. In other words, there may be cases already bound for the Privy Council where the first stage leave has been given but not the final leave. The point is that I want to offer the assurances that we will not bring the law into force even after it is signed by the Governor General if it passes here and passes the Senate today, we will not bring the law into force until a sufficient time has elapsed for those cases that would normally be caught in limbo are to be dealt with.  As well, I would urge the Bar Association to look at the rules of court for the Caribbean Court of Justice to be satisfied that in fact those rules are workable for us here in this jurisdiction.”

In January at the opening of the Supreme Court, Attorney General Wilfred ‘Sedi’ Elrington suggested that Belize will have fully adapted the CCJ by 2011. And as we reported last Friday, the House also gave the nod to the appointment of an attorney general to be drawn from private practice, which will mean that persons who are not in the House or Senate can be appointed to the job. And who will that be? It is widely reported that the constitutional amendment was engineered to facilitate the appointment of the Prime Minister’s first wife Lois Young. Young was initially proposed as permanent representative to the UN, but that appears to now be off the radar.