Commonwealth Caribbean Jurisprudence and the Privy Council (From Revista IIDH, P 27-50, 1995, Antonio A Cancado Trindade and Daniel Zovatto G, eds.)

• NCJ Number: 164160
• Author(s): M de la Bastide
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 24 pages
• Sale Source: Inter-American Institute of Human Rights
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: Costa Rica

Annotation

This paper considers how the jurisdiction of the Privy Council of the Commonwealth Caribbean region has been reduced, presents statistics on appeals from the Commonwealth Caribbean, and considers a few of the more important decisions recently made by the Council in appeals from the Caribbean.

Abstract

The number of independent countries who retain appeals to the Privy council has been greatly reduced in recent years. If the Caribbean is excluded, there are only Brunei, Zambia, Mauritius, and New Zealand. Moreover, appeals from Brunei are now to be limited to civil cases, and the authorities in New Zealand are now in the process of considering whether or not to retain or abolish the right of appeal to the Privy Council. A review of the number of cases that have gone from the Caribbean countries over the last 10 years shows there were over 214, and the number of appeals determined after a hearing was 163, with 68 appeals having been dismissed without a hearing. Of the appeals determined, the decision of the local court of appeal was upheld in 102 cases, and in 61 cases it was reversed. Neither the common law, which consists of the principles derived from decided cases, nor statute law can provide a clear and certain answer to every question, and the decisions that a final court of appeal is called upon to make to fill the interstices is sometimes similar to those made by a democratically elected parliament. The court cases reviewed in this paper are examples of decisions of this type.