Law Association urges respectful debate over Hadeed ruling

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) is urg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to re­frain from mak­ing per­son­al at­tacks against Court of Ap­peal judges fol­low­ing the court’s re­cent rul­ing in the Hadeed case.

The rul­ing, de­liv­ered last week, over­turned a High Court or­der that had di­rect­ed the re­lease of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve from pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion in­to house ar­rest. The Court of Ap­peal in­stead stayed that or­der pend­ing the State’s ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil, leav­ing the cou­ple in de­ten­tion while the le­gal chal­lenge con­tin­ues.

In a me­dia re­lease on Mon­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion said while pub­lic dis­cus­sion and crit­i­cism of ju­di­cial de­ci­sions are le­git­i­mate in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, such com­men­tary should re­main re­spect­ful and should not in­clude un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions that ques­tion the in­tegri­ty or in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry.