Chief Justice laments slow pace of justice in T&T

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh has called on ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and court staff to work hard and less from home to make the Ju­di­cia­ry more ef­fi­cient and pro­duc­tive. 

Boodoos­ingh made the call yes­ter­day as he presided over his first Law Term open­ing since be­ing ap­point­ed last year to re­place for­mer chief jus­tice Ivor Archie af­ter his re­tire­ment. 

In his speech, Boodoos­ingh laid out his vi­sion for the Ju­di­cia­ry to car­ry out its con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date with in­tegri­ty, fair­ness, in­de­pen­dence, trans­paren­cy, ef­fi­cien­cy and time­li­ness. 

He said: “I am call­ing on you to sup­port my vi­sion for a high-per­form­ing Ju­di­cia­ry. This means we have to man­age cas­es more ef­fec­tive­ly, sit for longer, dis­pose of more cas­es and give prop­er rea­sons for our de­ci­sions and judg­ments.”

Boodoos­ingh sug­gest­ed that im­prov­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry’s per­for­mance is the best way to im­prove pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence and re­spond to le­git­i­mate con­struc­tive crit­i­cism. 

“We must not be afraid of scruti­ny of our work, both the vol­ume and qual­i­ty. Ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence is not in­con­sis­tent with ac­count­abil­i­ty for what we do,” he said. 

Re­fer­ring to sta­tis­tics com­piled dur­ing the 2025/2026 Law Term, Boodoos­ingh not­ed that the civ­il courts had man­aged to dis­pose of 140 per cent more cas­es that were filed dur­ing the pe­ri­od. 

How­ev­er, he raised con­cerns over the length of time lit­i­gants still had to wait for judg­ments af­ter cas­es were con­clud­ed. 

Boodoos­ingh re­vealed plans to in­tro­duce min­i­mum stan­dards for the hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion of cas­es and re­quire­ments for ju­di­cial of­fi­cers to pro­vide sta­tus re­ports on their man­age­ment of their case-load. 

Deal­ing with the much-ma­ligned crim­i­nal di­vi­sion, Boodoos­ingh high­light­ed an im­proved case dis­po­si­tion rate but said re­duc­tion in the back­log of cas­es is de­pen­dent on third-par­ty stake­hold­ers such as the po­lice, de­fence at­tor­neys and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP). 

While he not­ed that the num­ber of judges as­signed to the di­vi­sion and the spe­cialised court fa­cil­i­ties made avail­able to them had in­creased, he sug­gest­ed that more work could still be done. 

Boodoos­ingh said he was es­pe­cial­ly con­cerned with op­er­a­tions of the Mag­is­trates’ and Dis­trict Courts re­main­ing vir­tu­al even af­ter the end of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Al­though he ad­mit­ted that such tech­nol­o­gy can still be used for cer­tain hear­ings, he sug­gest­ed that such tech­nol­o­gy could not re­place more ef­fec­tive in-per­son hear­ings.

He pre­sent­ed sta­tis­tics which showed mag­is­trates were dis­pos­ing of be­tween 80,000 and 100,000 cas­es an­nu­al­ly be­fore the in­tro­duc­tion of such hear­ings and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 cas­es af­ter the wide­spread use of vir­tu­al hear­ings de­spite be­ing re­quired to pre­side over few­er cas­es.

“While on­line hear­ings may be more con­ve­nient for many per­sons, in­clud­ing for lawyers, mag­is­trates and po­lice of­fi­cers, as far as Mag­is­trates’ Courts are con­cerned, they have not been as ef­fec­tive as in-per­son hear­ings in get­ting cas­es com­plet­ed and get­ting them com­plet­ed in a time­ly man­ner,” he said. 

He al­so took is­sue with mag­is­trates pre­sid­ing over cas­es for on­ly a few hours a day. 

“A mag­is­trate should gen­er­al­ly be hear­ing cas­es from 9 am to 12 pm and 1 pm to 3 pm on a dai­ly ba­sis,” Boodoos­ingh said. 

“We can­not keep com­plain­ing about de­lay and at the same time want­i­ng to con­tin­ue the way we are go­ing,” he added. 

Boodoos­ingh not­ed that the Ju­di­cia­ry had re­ceived ap­provals to con­duct ma­jor ren­o­va­tions to the San Fer­nan­do Supreme Court build­ing and the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court. 

He not­ed that less se­ri­ous re­pairs at all oth­er court lo­ca­tions could be fi­nanced by redi­rect­ing funds that would have been used to ser­vice now-ter­mi­nat­ed leas­es for a Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec) build­ing for­mer­ly used by the Fam­i­ly Court and an of­fi­cial Chief Jus­tice res­i­dence.

“To quote a fa­mous busi­ness­man, we need the mon­ey. We too are re­view­ing our in­fra­struc­ture and op­er­a­tions to see where we can cut costs, make things more ef­fi­cient, and to sell off un­used as­sets,” he said. 

Boodoos­ingh al­so an­nounced plans to live stream cer­tain ma­jor hear­ings of the Court of Ap­peal and to in­tro­duce a mo­bile ju­di­cial cen­tre to pro­vide ac­cess to jus­tice to cit­i­zens liv­ing in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.