Veteran attorney-at-law Bert Samuels on Tuesday doubled down on his call for the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to be Jamaica’s final appellate court despite the controversy now engulfing it with the publication of leaked emails by the Sunday Express in Trinidad.

Addressing a media briefing he staged on Tuesday, Samuels condemned the leak of the emails and argued that integrity by judges must be maintained at the highest standard.

“I go to the recent comment of Member of Parliament Marlene Malahoo-Forte in her post on X, formerly Twitter….Mrs Forte, a former attorney general and former minister of constitutional affairs, took a position to which I agree. She — regarding the leaked emails of a number of CCJ judges, which has led to all of this — said, ‘What a poor display of judgement’. The leak of internal emails among judges, internal issues, is a bigger problem than those issues on the discussion.