ADVANCE COPY
Privy Council Appeal No. 41 of 2004
Independent Jamaica Council for
Human Rights (1998)
Limited and Others Appellants
v.
(1) Hon. Syringa
Marshall-Burnett
and
(2) The Attorney General of
Jamaica Respondents
FROM
THE
COURT OF APPEAL OF JAMAICA
---------------
JUDGMENT OF THE LORDS OF THE JUDICIAL
COMMITTEE OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL,
Delivered the 3rd February 2005
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Present at the hearing:-
Lord Bingham of Cornhill
Lord Steyn
Lord Rodger of
Earlsferry
Baroness Hale of
Richmond
Lord Carswell
[Delivered by Lord
Bingham of Cornhill]
------------------
1.
On 30
September 2004 the Governor-General of Jamaica, acting under section 60 of the
Constitution, gave his assent to three bills, the broad effect of which was to
abolish the right of appeal to Her Majesty in Council and to substitute a right
of appeal to a new regional court of final appeal, the Caribbean Court of
Justice (“the CCJ”). The key question in this appeal is whether the procedure
adopted in enacting that legislation complied with the requirements laid down
in the Constitution.
2.
The
appellants’ challenge to the constitutionality of the legislative procedure
adopted came before the Full Court of the Supreme Court (Wolfe CJ, Marsh and
McIntosh JJ) when the bills were still going through Parliament. That court did not review the legal merits
of the appellants’ argument, but struck out the proceedings as premature. In reasons given on 17 May 2004, following a
hearing in April, the court held that any challenge should be made after and
not before enactment of the legislation.
The Court of Appeal (Forte P, Harrison and Smith JJA) did hear argument
on the merits of the appellants’ challenge, but rejected it for reasons given
in judgments delivered on 12 July 2004.
The appellants repeat their challenge before the Board. But because the bills have now received the
assent of the Governor-General, the argument on prematurity has been overtaken
by events, and so is not pursued. An
undertaking has been given that the Acts will not be brought into force until
this appeal has been determined.
3.
This is an
appeal of obvious constitutional importance, and two matters should be clearly
stated at the outset. First, Dr Lloyd
Barnett, speaking for all the appellants, roundly accepted that there could
have been no objection to legislation supported by a majority of members of
each House of Parliament which simply abolished the right of appeal to Her
Majesty in Council and no more. He also
accepted that the Parliament of Jamaica could validly have provided, in effect,
for the CCJ to take the place of the Privy Council as the ultimate court of
appeal from the courts of Jamaica. But
this latter object, he submitted, could not, consistently with the
Constitution, be achieved by ordinary legislation since it undermined certain
provisions of the Constitution which were accorded special protection and could
thus be altered only by employing the procedure appropriate for altering such
provisions. Thus the argument is not
whether the Parliament of Jamaica had power to achieve the object it sought to
achieve but whether the procedural means of achieving it followed the procedure
required by the Constitution.
4.
Secondly, it
must be understood that the Board, sitting as the final court of appeal of
Jamaica, has no interest of its own in the outcome of this appeal. The Board exists in this capacity to serve
the interests of the people of Jamaica.
If and when the people of Jamaica judge that it no longer does so, they
are fully entitled to take appropriate steps to bring its role to an end. The question is whether the steps taken in
this case were, constitutionally, appropriate.
5.
Section 110
of the Constitution (which forms Part 3 of Chapter VII of the Constitution)
provides for a right of appeal from the Court of Appeal to Her Majesty in
Council. The appeal is in some cases as
of right (subsection (1)), in others by leave of the Court of Appeal (subsection
(2)), in others by special leave of the Board (subsection (3)). The Caribbean
Court of Justice (Constitutional Amendment) Act 2004, Act 20 of 2004, one of
the measures challenged by the appellants, alters this part of the
Constitution. It deletes from the
heading of Part 3 the reference to Her Majesty in Council and substitutes
reference to the CCJ. It deletes
section 110 and substitutes a new section which, with some updating of monetary
values and some amendment, is to very much the same effect, save that
references to the CCJ are substituted for references to Her Majesty in
Council. A new section 110A makes plain
that there shall be no appeal to Her Majesty from any court in Jamaica by
special leave. The Act does not alter
section 94(7) of the Constitution, relating to the Director of Public
Prosecutions, in which reference is made to the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council. Nor does it alter subsections
(5), (6) and (9) of sections 100 and 106 which address the role of the Judicial
Committee in the removal of judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal
respectively.
6.
The second of
the measures challenged by the appellants is the Caribbean Court of Justice Act
2004, Act 21 of 2004. This Act seeks to
give effect in the domestic law of Jamaica to an international Agreement
Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice signed at Bridgetown, Barbados, on
14 February 2001, as amended by a Protocol to that Agreement Relating to the
Juridical Personality and Legal Capacity of the Court signed at Montego Bay,
Jamaica, on 4 July 2003. The Act
provides (in section 3) that the provisions of the Agreement shall have the
force of law in Jamaica, and empowers the Minister (in section 4) to make such
provisions as may be necessary for carrying the provisions of the Agreement
into effect. Section 5 of the Act
provides:
“5.-(1) Where
any amendment to the Agreement is ratified by the Contracting Parties, the
Minister may, upon the coming into force of that amendment, by order amend the
Schedule by including therein the amendment so ratified.
(2) Any order made under this section may contain
such consequential, supplemental or ancillary provisions as appear to the
Minister to be necessary or expedient for the purpose of giving due effect to
the amendment ratified as aforesaid and, without prejudice to the generality of
the foregoing, may contain provisions amending references in this Act to
specific provisions of the Agreement.
(3) Every order made under this section shall be
subject to affirmative resolution.
(4) Where the Schedule is amended pursuant to this
section, any reference in this Act or any other instrument to the Agreement
shall, unless the context otherwise requires, be construed as a reference to
the Agreement as so amended.”
The CCJ is to have an original
jurisdiction. It is also to have an
appellate jurisdiction, defined as in the new section 110 inserted in the
Constitution by the Constitutional Amendment Act. Section 16 provides:
“A Judge of the Court [the CCJ] may
exercise all of the powers and functions of a Judge of the Supreme Court or of
the Court of Appeal with respect to the area within its jurisdiction.”
Provision is made in section 20 for a
Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission which is to consist of persons
appointed in accordance with the Agreement.
Under section 21 the Commission has responsibility for making
appointments to the office of Judge of the Court, other than that of President,
terminating appointments in accordance with the provisions of the Agreement,
making a recommendation for the appointment of the President and exercising
disciplinary control over the Judges of the Court other than the
President. By section 21(5),
“The proceedings of the Commission shall
not be inquired into by any court of law or tribunal.”
7.
The Agreement
and the Protocol, both of which were signed and in due course ratified by a
number of Caribbean states, are scheduled to the Act in Parts I and II. It is unnecessary for present purposes to
consider the Protocol. Nor need the
full effect of the Agreement be summarised. The preamble acknowledges the desirability
of entrenching the CCJ in the national constitutions of the contracting
states. The President of the Court is
to be appointed or removed by the qualified majority vote of three-quarters of
the contracting parties on the recommendation of the Regional Judicial and
Legal Services Commission. The Judges of the CCJ other than the President are
to be appointed or removed by a majority vote of all the members of the
Commission (article IV, paras 6 and 7).
The Commission is to comprise the President of the CCJ as chairman, and
ten members selected or nominated by specified professional, academic and
public bodies. The Commission is to
appoint judges of the CCJ other than the President, terminate appointments in
accordance with the provisions of the Agreement, and exercise, in accordance
with Regulations, disciplinary control over judges of the CCJ other than the
President (article V, paras 1 and 3).
Article IX governs the tenure of office of judges. The office of a judge may not be abolished
while there is a substantive holder of it.
The President is appointed for a non-renewable term of seven years or
until he is seventy-two, whichever is earlier.
Other judges also are subject to the same retirement age. A judge may only be removed from office for
incapacity or misbehaviour, and only in accordance with the provisions of
article IX. Paragraphs 5, 6 and 8 of
article IX provide:
“5.-(1) Subject
to Article IV, paragraph 5, the President shall be removed from office by the
Heads of Government on the recommendation of the Commission, if the question of
the removal of the President has been referred by the Heads of Government to a
tribunal and the tribunal has advised the Commission that the President ought
to be removed from office for inability or misbehaviour referred to in
paragraph 4.
(2) Subject
to Article IV, paragraph 6, a Judge other than the President shall be removed
from office by the Commission if the question of the removal of the Judge has
been referred by the Commission to a tribunal; and the tribunal has advised the
Commission that the Judge ought to be removed from office for inability or
misbehaviour referred to in paragraph 4.
6. If at
least three Heads of Government in the case of the President jointly represent
to the other Heads of Government, or if
the Commission decides in the case of any other Judge, that the question of
removing the President or the Judge from office ought to be investigated, then
–
(a) the
Heads of Government or the Commission shall appoint a tribunal which shall
consist of a chairman and not less than two other members, selected by the
Heads of Government or the Commission, as the case may be, after such
consultations as may be considered expedient, from among persons who hold or
have held office as a Judge of a court of unlimited jurisdiction in civil and
criminal matters in some part of the Commonwealth, or in a State exercising
civil law jurisprudence common to Contracting Parties, or a court having
jurisdiction in appeals from any such court; and
(b) the tribunal shall enquire into the matter and
advise the Heads of Government or the Commission, as the case may be, whether
or not the President or the Judge ought to be removed from office.
8. If the
question of removing the President or any other Judge of the Court from office
has been referred to a tribunal under paragraph 6 of this Article, the Heads of
Government in the case of the President, or the Commission, in the case of any
other Judge of the Court, may suspend such Judge from performing the functions
of his office, and any such suspension may at any time be revoked by the Heads
of Government or the Commission, as the case may be, and shall in any case
cease to have effect if the tribunal advises the Heads of Government or the
Commission that the Judge ought not to be removed from office.”
The original and appellate jurisdictions of
the CCJ are prescribed in some detail.
Subject to the Agreement and with the approval of the Conference of
Heads of Government of Member States of the Caribbean Community, the Commission
are to determine the terms and conditions and other benefits of the President
and other members of the Court, which may not be altered to their disadvantage
during their tenure of office. The
assessed contributions of the contracting states are to be charged to the
Consolidated Fund or public revenues of the respective states (article XXVIII,
paras 1, 2 and 3). Reference should
lastly be made to article XXXII:
“AMENDMENT
1. This Agreement may be amended by the
Contracting Parties.
2. Every amendment shall be subject to
ratification by the Contracting Parties in accordance with their respective
constitutional procedures and shall enter into force one month after the date
on which the last Instrument of ratification or accession is deposited with the
Secretary-General (hereinafter in this Agreement referred to as ‘the
Depositary’).”
8.
The third
measure challenged by the appellants may be more briefly described. The
Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) Act, enacted in 1962 to take effect on the
eve of independence, had provided in section 35, which comprised Part VIII of
that Act, that the Director of Public Prosecutions, the prosecutor or the
defendant might, with the leave of the Court of Appeal, appeal to Her Majesty
in Council from any decision of the Court of Appeal in the exercise of its
criminal jurisdiction, if the case raised a point of law of exceptional public
importance and it was desirable in the public interest that a further appeal
should be brought. The third measure,
the Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) (Amendment) Act 2004, Act 19 of 2004,
amended the 1962 Act to insert a definition of the CCJ, to amend the heading of
Part VIII and to amend section 35 by substituting references to the CCJ for
references to Her Majesty in Council in the marginal note and the text of the
section.
9.
While
it is true, as Lord Diplock explained in Hinds v The Queen [1977] AC 195,
212, that certain important assumptions underlie
constitutions drafted on what he called the Westminster model, it is also true
that when the people of Jamaica adopted their Constitution as an independent
nation in 1962 they made certain very significant departures from the
constitutional practice of the United Kingdom.
The governing institutions and practices of the nation were identified
and stated in a single instrument, the Constitution. That Constitution was to have the effect, by section 2, that
(subject to sections 49 and 50)
“if
any other law is inconsistent with this Constitution, this Constitution shall
prevail and the other law shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.”
Thus the Constitution and not, as in the
United Kingdom, Parliament is (save in respect of Chapter III of the
Constitution) to be sovereign. It was
of course foreseen that with the passage of time and the benefit of experience
alteration of the Constitution would on occasion be necessary, and the framers
of the Constitution took care to grade its provisions so as to require
differing levels of popular support depending on the structural significance of
the provision to be altered.
10.
To alter some
provisions of the Constitution, which may be described as “deeply entrenched”,
section 49(3) and (4) of the Constitution require the bill effecting the
alteration to be introduced in the House of Representatives, require a period
of at least six months to elapse between the introduction of the bill into the
House and its passing by that House, require the bill to be passed in each
House by the votes of not less than two-thirds of all the members of that House
and require the bill to be approved by a majority of the electorate. These deeply entrenched provisions are
listed in section 49(3). They include
section 49 itself, section 2 (quoted above), section 34, providing that there
shall be a Parliament of Jamaica consisting of Her Majesty, a Senate and a
House of Representatives, sections 35 and 36, governing the composition of the
Senate and the House of Representatives, and sections 63(2) and 64(2) governing
the frequency of parliamentary sittings and the duration of Parliaments.
11.
A much larger
class of sections and subsections of the Constitution, listed in section 49(2),
have been described as “entrenched” but not “deeply entrenched”. To amend one of these provisions, section
49(2) and (4) require the same procedure to be followed as in the case of a
deeply entrenched provision, save that the measure need not be submitted to the
electorate. All other provisions of the
Constitution, neither deeply entrenched nor entrenched, may be amended if
supported by the votes of a majority of all members of each House: section
49(4)(b). But even these provisions
enjoy some special protection, since all questions not involving any alteration
of the Constitution are determined by a majority of the votes of the members
present and voting (section 54(1)) and not a majority of all members.
12.
Chapter VII
of the Constitution, divided into four Parts, is entitled “The
Judicature”. Part 1 governs the Supreme
Court and provides in section 97(1) that “There shall be a Supreme Court for
Jamaica …”. In fact, as Lord Diplock
pointed out in Hinds at p 221, the Supreme Court of Jamaica had existed
under that title since 1880. It is not
necessary to refer to all the provisions affecting the Supreme Court and the
Chief Justice. But attention must be
drawn to section 100, which deals with the tenure of Supreme Court judges, a
very significant matter since the independence of the judges (or, put
negatively, the protection of judges from executive pressure or interference)
is all but universally recognised as a necessary feature of the rule of
law. Subsections (4) to (6) of section
100 provide:
“(4) A Judge of the Supreme Court may be removed
from office only for inability to discharge the functions of his office
(whether arising from infirmity of body or mind or any other cause) or for
misbehaviour, and shall not be so removed except in accordance with the
provisions of subsection (5) of this section.
(5) A Judge of the Supreme Court shall be removed
from office by the Governor-General by instrument under the Broad Seal if the
question of the removal of that Judge from office has, at the request of the
Governor-General, made in pursuance of subsection (6) of this section, been
referred by Her Majesty to the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty’s Privy
Council under section 4 of the Judicial Committee Act, 1833, or any other
enactment enabling Her Majesty in that behalf, and the Judicial Committee has
advised Her Majesty that the Judge ought to be removed from office for
inability as aforesaid or for misbehaviour.
(6) If the
Prime Minister (in the case of the Chief Justice) or the Chief Justice after
consultation with the Prime Minister (in the case of any other Judge)
represents to the Governor-General that the question of removing a Judge of the
Supreme Court from office for inability as aforesaid or for misbehaviour ought
to be investigated, then –
(a) the
Governor-General shall appoint a tribunal, which shall consist of a Chairman
and not less than two other members, selected by the Governor-General on the
advice of the Prime Minister (in the case of the Chief Justice) or of the Chief
Justice (in the case of any other Judge) from among persons who hold or have
held office as a judge of a court having unlimited jurisdiction in civil and
criminal matters in some part of the Commonwealth or a court having
jurisdiction in appeals from any such court;
(b) that tribunal shall enquire into the matter and
report on the facts thereof to the Governor-General and recommend to the
Governor-General whether he should request that the question of the removal of
that Judge should be referred by Her Majesty to the Judicial Committee; and
(c) if the tribunal so recommends, the
Governor-General shall request that the question should be referred
accordingly.”
Each of these provisions is entrenched
under the Constitution, as are the succeeding subsections, which need not be
quoted. So also is section 101, which
deals with the emoluments of Supreme Court judges: these are to be such as may
from time to time be prescribed by or under any law, but they are not to be
altered to the judge’s disadvantage during his continuance in office and
salaries are to be charged on and paid out of the Consolidated Fund.
13.
Unlike the
Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal for Jamaica was a new court in 1962, and it
is the subject of Part 2 of Chapter VII of the Constitution. The court is established and its composition
prescribed by section 103, an entrenched provision. The appointment of the President and the other judges is governed
by section 104, also an entrenched provision.
Section 105, also entrenched, provides for the performance of duties by
acting judges. Section 106 addresses
the tenure of judges of the Court of Appeal and repeats in subsections (4), (5)
and (6), with reference to the Court of Appeal, the provisions of section 100(4),
(5) and (6) quoted above. They are again
entrenched. Section 107, dealing with
emoluments of the judges of the Court of Appeal, is to the same effect as the
Supreme Court provision in section 101, but in this instance the section is not
entrenched.
14.
Part 3 of the
Constitution governs appeals to Her Majesty in Council. The Part contains only section 110, the
effect of which before amendment by the 2004 Act has been summarised in
paragraph 5 above. This section is not
entrenched, a fact upon which the Solicitor-General, representing both respondents,
strongly relied.
15.
Part 4 of the
Constitution establishes and relates to the Judicial Service Commission. Subsections (2) to (10) of section 111
govern the composition of the Commission and the terms of service and
appointment of members. These
provisions are entrenched. The puisne
judges of the Supreme Court and the judges of the Court of Appeal (other than
the President) are appointed by the Governor-General acting on the advice of
the Commission: sections 98(2) and 104(2).
16.
As already
recorded, Dr Barnett for the appellants accepted in argument that section 110
of the Constitution, providing for appeal to the Privy Council, could have been
repealed by the votes of a majority of all the members of each House, since
section 110 is not entrenched. The
result would have been to constitute the Court of Appeal as the ultimate
appellate tribunal in and for Jamaica.
Supreme judicial authority would then rest with a body whose
constitutional position is buttressed by safeguards carefully designed to
protect the process of appointment to the court and the exercise by the court
of its jurisdiction against the possibility of executive pressure or
interference. Thus repeal of section
110, without more, would not weaken the protection which the Constitution set
out to guarantee for the benefit not of the courts themselves, but of the
people of Jamaica. What was
constitutionally objectionable, Dr Barnett submitted, was to establish a new
court to which appeals from the Court of Appeal would lie when the new court
would enjoy none of the entrenched protection afforded by the Constitution to
the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal and when the parliamentary procedure
followed was not that mandated by the Constitution for amendment of an entrenched
provision. Adopting the language of
Viscount Simonds in Attorney-General for Australia v The Queen [1957] AC 288,
313, echoed by Lord Diplock in Hinds at p
219, Dr Barnett said that it would make a mockery of the Constitution if the
safeguards entrenched to ensure the integrity of legal process in Jamaica could
be circumvented by creating a superior court enjoying no such constitutional
protection. He referred to Minister of the Interior v Harris (1952) (4) SA 769 (AD) as a case in which a malign government, vexed by a decision of
the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa, had established a
superior High Court of Parliament to neutralise some of its decisions. It was no answer to point to the safeguards
contained in the CCJ Agreement, since these enjoyed no constitutional
protection in Jamaica and could in any event be amended by agreement of the
parties to the Agreement followed by ratification, both of them executive acts
taking effect in Jamaican law on no more than affirmative resolution. Nor was it any answer to point out that the
right of appeal to the Privy Council was not entrenched in the Constitution,
since that was an existing right, the independence of the Privy Council and its
imperviousness to local pressure had never been in doubt and it was not clear
how the framers of the Constitution could have entrenched the independence of
members of the Judicial Committee had they wished to do so. Dr Barnett relied on the principle stated by
Lord Diplock in Hinds at p 214 – “It is the substance of the law that
must be regarded, not the form” – to contend that in substance the three Acts,
as they now are, impliedly alter entrenched provisions of the
Constitution. It was therefore necessary
to employ the procedure appropriate for alteration of an entrenched
provision. This was not done, and the
three Acts are accordingly unconstitutional and void.
17.
The
Solicitor-General countered this argument by submitting that neither singly nor
cumulatively did the three Acts alter any provision of the Constitution, with
the single exception of section 110 which enjoyed no constitutional
entrenchment. As it was open to
Parliament to repeal that section by the votes of a majority of all members of
both Houses, so it was open to Parliament, by the same procedure, to sanction
the establishment of a new court to take the place, effectively, of the Privy
Council and to exercise in addition a new original jurisdiction. There was no threat to the values protected
by the Constitution, since the CCJ Agreement provided safeguards similar in
effect to those contained in the Constitution to protect the independence of
the higher judiciary of Jamaica.
18.
In the Court
of Appeal, Forte P rejected the appellants’ argument on the merits, holding
that the “question of entrenchment of a new final Appellate Court rests in my
view with the policy-makers” and that the provisions of the CCJ Agreement “are
clearly aimed at giving ‘security of tenure’ to the Judges of the [CCJ], which
though not included in the Constitution, nevertheless give legislative
protection”. Harrison JA agreed. He held that “The CCJ, an extra-territorial
court, created by the Agreement between Caribbean states, is not sought to be
established by nor can it be governed by The Constitution”, and he accepted
that neither singly nor cumulatively had any of the three bills (as they were
at that stage) been presented in contravention of the procedure prescribed by
section 49 of the Constitution. Smith JA
also agreed, holding the appellants’ argument to be without merit, unhelpful
and in part misconceived. He concluded
on this issue:
“The
Bill seeks to transfer to the CCJ the jurisdiction exercised by the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council by virtue of Part 3 of Chapter VII. None of the provisions in Part 3 is
entrenched. The Bill, in my judgment,
seeks to have Judges appointed to the Court on substantially the same terms as
those laid down in Chapter VII of the Constitution. Accordingly, it was not necessary for the respondents to seek to
amend or alter any of the entrenched or deeply entrenched provisions of Chapter
VII. As the Solicitor General correctly
submitted, it is incorrect to say that the amendments of Chapter VII sought by
the Bills require the procedure applicable to the entrenched sections. I hold, therefore, that the respondents have
embarked upon the correct constitutional procedure in introducing the Bills.”
19.
It is clear,
in the opinion of the Board, that the present question must be approached as
one of substance, not of form, and the approach commended by Lord Diplock in Hinds
at pp 211-214 is that which should be followed. It is noteworthy that in section 49(9)(b) of the Constitution
“alter” is defined to include “amend, modify, re-enact with or without
amendment or modification, make different provision in lieu of, suspend, repeal
or add to”. The Board would accept, as
was held in Kariapper v Wijesinha [1968] AC 717, 743, that the words “amend or repeal” cover an alteration by
implication.
20.
Chapter VII
of the Constitution established a regime which provided, in respect of the
higher Jamaican judiciary, as put by Lord Diplock in Hinds at p 219,
“that
their independence from political pressure by Parliament or by the executive in
the exercise of their judicial functions shall be assured by granting to them
such degree of security of tenure in their office as is justified by the
importance of the jurisdiction that they exercise.”
This independence was assured by the
provisions enacting (per Lord Diplock, p 219) that
“They can only be removed from office upon
the advice of the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty’s Privy Council in the
United Kingdom given on a reference made upon the recommendation of a tribunal
of inquiry consisting of persons who hold or have held high judicial office in
some part of the Commonwealth.”
From these Jamaican courts an appeal lay to
this Board which, although enjoying no entrenched protection in the
Constitution, was known to be wholly immune from executive or parliamentary
pressure in any jurisdiction from which appeals lay and whose members were all
but irremovable.
21.
The three
Acts do not, singly or cumulatively, weaken the constitutional protection
enjoyed by the higher judiciary of Jamaica. The question is whether,
consistently with the constitutional regime just described, a power to review
the decisions of the higher courts of Jamaica may properly be entrusted,
without adopting the procedure mandated by the Constitution for the amendment
of entrenched provisions, to a new court which, whatever its other merits, does
not enjoy the protection accorded by the Constitution to the higher judiciary
of Jamaica. In answering this question
the test is not whether the protection provided by the CCJ Agreement is
stronger or weaker than that which existed before but whether, in substance, it
is different, for if it is different the effect of the legislation is to alter,
within the all-embracing definition in section 49(9)(b), the regime established
by Chapter VII. The Board has no
difficulty in accepting, and does not doubt, that the CCJ Agreement represents
a serious and conscientious endeavour to create a new regional court of high
quality and complete independence, enjoying all the advantages which a regional
court could hope to enjoy. But Dr
Barnett is correct to point out that the Agreement may be amended, and such
amendment ratified, by the governments of the contracting states, and such
amendment could take effect in the domestic law of Jamaica by affirmative
resolution. The risk that the
governments of the contracting states might amend the CCJ Agreement so as to
weaken its independence is, it may be hoped, fanciful. But an important function of a constitution
is to give protection against governmental misbehaviour, and the three Acts
give rise to a risk which did not exist in the same way before. The Board is driven to conclude that the
three Acts, taken together, do have the effect of undermining the protection
given to the people of Jamaica by entrenched provisions of Chapter VII of the
Constitution. From this it follows that
the procedure appropriate for amendment of an entrenched provision should have
been followed.
22.
It
remains to consider whether the provision abolishing the right of appeal to the
Privy Council may be severed from the other provisions of the three Acts and
given effect if the other provisions are not.
The familiar test is that formulated by Viscount Simon in Attorney-General for Alberta v Attorney-General for Canada [1947] AC 503,
518:
“The
real question is whether what remains is so inextricably bound up with the part
declared invalid that what remains cannot independently survive or, as it has
sometimes been put, whether on a fair review of the whole matter it can be
assumed that the legislature would have enacted what survives without enacting
the part that is ultra vires at all.”
Fitzgerald CJ, sitting in the Supreme Court
of Ireland, adopted a similar test in Maher v Attorney-General [1973] I.R. 140,
147, where he said:
“But if what remains is so
inextricably bound up with the part held invalid that the remainder cannot
survive independently, or if the remainder would not represent the legislative
intent, the remaining part will not be severed and given constitutional
validity.”
In the present instance
Parliament legislated not simply to revoke the right of appeal to the Privy
Council but to replace it with a right of appeal to the CCJ. From statements made to the Senate by the
Attorney-General on 1 and 2 July 2004, and by the Prime Minister and the
Minister for Foreign Affairs to the House of Representatives on 27 and 28 July,
it is clear that the three measures were seen as “connected” “companion
measures” intended to be part of a single, interdependent scheme. The bills were presented as a package. On the material now before the Board it
would not appear to have been the intention of Parliament to revoke the right
of appeal to the Privy Council without putting anything in its place, and this
provision cannot therefore be severed.
This is a conclusion which the Solicitor General expressly declined to
challenge.
23. At the
invitation of the Board, the parties made written submissions on the steps to
be taken to achieve the result sought by the Government if the appellants’
submissions were to be accepted. The Board is grateful for the helpful response
to its invitation, but is mindful that this question has not been the subject
of consideration or decision by the lower courts and concludes that it should
not seek to rule on this issue in these proceedings.
24. In the result, the Board will humbly advise
Her Majesty that the appeal should be allowed and a declaration made that the
Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) (Amendment) Act 2004, the Caribbean Court
of Justice (Constitutional Amendment) Act 2004 and the Caribbean Court of
Justice Act 2004 were not passed in accordance with the procedure required by
the Constitution and are accordingly void.
The Board notes that no order for costs was made by the Supreme Court
and the Court of Appeal and invites written submissions on the incidence of
costs before the Board within 21 days.