Trinidad judge suspends judgment on law students short cut

(Trinidad Guardian) High Court Judge Vasheist Kokaram has grant­ed a lim­it­ed sus­pen­sion of his judg­ment on the un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of a law, which gives prospec­tive lawyers from T&T a short­cut in­to the lo­cal le­gal pro­fes­sion not af­ford­ed to Cari­com cit­i­zens.

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten de­ci­sion at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Kokaram grant­ed the sus­pen­sion to al­low Par­lia­ment time to be­gin the process of giv­ing ef­fect to his judg­ment by amend­ing the of­fend­ing pro­vi­sion un­der Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act or for an ap­peal the sub­stan­tive de­ci­sion.

Kokaram’s de­ci­sion to grant the lim­it­ed sus­pen­sion un­til Oc­to­ber 4, does not open the door for stu­dents, who are qual­i­fied un­der the pro­vi­sion, to be ad­mit­ted to prac­tice as

at­tor­neys dur­ing the next call to the bar in late Oc­to­ber or ear­ly No­vem­ber.

Kokaram stat­ed that the Reg­is­trar of the Supreme Court should ac­cept the stu­dent’s ap­pli­ca­tions but warned that they should not process un­til the un­cer­tain­ty over the is­sue is re­solved by ei­ther Par­lia­ment or the Court of Ap­peal.

Kokaram’s de­ci­sion to grant the sus­pen­sion sought by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion was al­so de­pen­dent on the for­mer pro­vid­ing a writ­ten un­der­tak­ing over the gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to amend­ing the leg­is­la­tion and the for­ma­tion of a stake­hold­er com­mit­tee to con­sid­er the cur­rent quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive de­mands on ad­mis­sion to the prac­tise of law.

Pro­vid­ed that the Par­lia­men­tary route is tak­en over the ap­peal method, Kokaram stat­ed that the AG’s Of­fice would be en­ti­tled to ap­ply for an ex­ten­sion of the sus­pen­sion be­fore it ex­pires.

In his 24-page de­ci­sion, Kokaram ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment’s de­lay in de­cid­ing whether to adopt his rec­om­men­da­tions over amend­ing the law or ap­peal his de­ci­sion.

“Not one small step…not even one inch tak­en by the de­fen­dant to set about restor­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty to any al­ter­na­tive path­way to ac­com­mo­date the per­sons who have been af­fect­ed by the or­der, nor to even con­sid­er it as a vi­able op­tion,” he said.

He claimed that there should be no de­lay in rec­ti­fy­ing the is­sue.

“Out of re­spect for the rule of law, gov­ern­ments must en­sure that un­con­sti­tu­tion­al leg­is­la­tion is not main­tained for any longer than is nec­es­sary and give sig­nif­i­cant leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ty to amend­ing or re­plac­ing laws that have been de­clared un­con­sti­tu­tion­al,” Kokaram said.

Kokaram al­so sug­gest­ed that he be­lieved that there would have been more im­me­di­ate ac­tion from the gov­ern­ment.

“Anx­i­ety should spur them in­to im­me­di­ate ac­tion. Con­cern for prospec­tive ap­pli­cants to be ad­mit­ted to the bar should be the dri­ving force to trans­late the drea­ry feet of any bu­reau­crat­ic mono­lith in­to quick­sil­ver,” Kokaram said.

In the con­tro­ver­sial law­suit, Di­anne Jhamil­ly Hadeed, A Grena­da-born St Lu­cian na­tion­al, who re­sides in Trinidad, chal­lenged Sec­tion 15 (1A) of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act. The seg­ment of the leg­is­la­tion gives T&T cit­i­zens who do not ob­tain a post-grad­u­ate Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (LEC) from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School an av­enue to be ad­mit­ted to prac­tice law.

Cit­i­zens, who ob­tain post-grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions in the Unit­ed King­dom or an­oth­er Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tion and are ad­mit­ted to prac­tice in those coun­tries, qual­i­fy un­der the sec­tion af­ter com­plet­ing a short six-month course at the law school in­stead of the com­pet­i­tive two-year LEC pro­gramme, which has lim­it­ed spaces but is open to all Cari­com na­tion­als.

While Kokaram up­held Hadeed’s case, he ruled that she was not en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion for the breach as she claimed.

In his judg­ment, Kokaram ac­knowl­edged that there were le­git­i­mate con­cerns which the leg­is­la­tion sought to ad­dress in­clud­ing lim­it­ed spaces at the law school and the need to de­vel­op this coun­try’s le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that they were not jus­ti­fi­able as he ques­tioned why there was a dis­tinc­tion be­tween T&T cit­i­zens and Cari­com na­tion­als.

Kokaram al­so not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment ad­mit­ted that the leg­is­la­tion of­fend­ed Cari­com treaties which T&T is a par­ty but claimed that it was done to help build a cadre of lawyers in T&T.