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.

LATT said the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion was made in the con­text of an in­ter­locu­to­ry ap­pli­ca­tion and did not de­ter­mine the ul­ti­mate le­gal­i­ty of the Hadeeds’ de­ten­tion or the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Emer­gency Pow­ers regime.

It said those sub­stan­tive is­sues re­main be­fore the courts for de­ter­mi­na­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the Supreme Court, com­pris­ing the High Court and the Court of Ap­peal, is re­spon­si­ble for re­solv­ing dis­putes, in­clud­ing those in­volv­ing per­son­al lib­er­ty, and that the on­go­ing pro­ceed­ings demon­strate that con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards con­tin­ue to op­er­ate dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

LATT said the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for emer­gency mea­sures in pre­scribed cir­cum­stances while pre­serv­ing ju­di­cial over­sight to de­ter­mine whether those mea­sures are law­ful, pro­por­tion­ate and rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able.

The as­so­ci­a­tion ac­knowl­edged that court de­ci­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in­volv­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and per­son­al lib­er­ty, of­ten at­tract in­tense pub­lic scruti­ny and said mem­bers of the pub­lic have the right to ques­tion and crit­i­cal­ly analyse ju­di­cial rul­ings.

How­ev­er, it warned that com­men­tary at­tack­ing the in­tegri­ty of the courts or ig­nor­ing the le­gal and ev­i­den­tial ba­sis for de­ci­sions risks un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

LATT al­so not­ed that the Court of Ap­peal has not yet de­liv­ered its writ­ten rea­sons for the de­ci­sion in the Hadeed mat­ter. It said those rea­sons will ex­plain the le­gal prin­ci­ples ap­plied by the court and help prac­ti­tion­ers, lit­i­gants and the pub­lic bet­ter un­der­stand the ba­sis for the rul­ing.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it has full con­fi­dence in the in­de­pen­dence and im­par­tial­i­ty of the ju­di­cia­ry and urged at­tor­neys to ad­vise their clients to ex­er­cise their right to com­ment on the de­ci­sion re­spect­ful­ly and avoid state­ments that un­der­mine con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.