CCJ judge says it is insulting to continue using British Privy Council

Justice Adrian Saunders of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) says it is insulting to continue using the British Privy Council as the region\'s final court of appeal, according to a report on www.cananews.net.



“There was a time when we had no choice but to utilise the Privy Council as our final court of appeal,” Justice Saunders told a St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Independence Luncheon in Brooklyn on Sunday.



“But today, in my view, it is an insult to the dignity of our people that we should continue to entrust the tasks of adjudging our disputes and protecting our democracy to the judges of another civilization, especially when we have established our own final court,” he added.



Justice Saunders said abolishing appeals to the Privy Council, “in effect, completes the circle of our independence,” adding that scepticism against the Trinidad and Tobago-based CCJ “boils down to a lack of faith, an absence of trust.\"



Justice Saunders said the region’s people will never advance if they continue to regard themselves as being inferior.



Lord Phillips, president of the new Supreme Court in Britain told London’s Financial Times newspaper that he plans to curb the “disproportionate” time he and his fellow senior justices have been spending in hearing legal appeals from independent countries from the Caribbean and other Commonwealth countries to the Privy Council.



Lord Phillips added that, “in an ideal world,” former Commonwealth countries would stop using the Privy Council and set up their own final courts of appeal instead.