Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad-based, Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, (CCJ) Jus­tice Adri­an Saun­ders says de­spite its chal­lenges the court, which was es­tab­lished to re­place the Lon­don-based Privy Coun­cil as the re­gion’s fi­nal and high­est court, “re­mains re­silient and op­ti­mistic”.

The CCJ was es­tab­lished in 2001 and while most of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries are sig­na­to­ries to its Orig­i­nal Ju­ris­dic­tion, on­ly Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, St. Lu­cia and Guyana are mem­bers of its Ap­pel­late Ju­ris­dic­tion. In ad­di­tion, the CCJ func­tions as an in­ter­na­tion­al court in­ter­pret­ing the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas that gov­ern­ment the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment.

De­liv­er­ing the an­nu­al Mac­fadyen Lec­ture here, Jus­tice Saun­ders spoke on the theme “Caribbean Court of Jus­tice at 20 years,” pro­vid­ing an in-depth ex­am­i­na­tion of the re­gion­al court .