Dear Editor,

I see that retired and former president of the Court of Appeal Justice Seymour Panton is urging acceptance of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as Jamaica’s final appellate court.

The reason he has to be doing this is because no body or entity has yet taken on the job in a comprehensive way to find out whether there is deep-seated scepticism of the CCJ or gone further to set out the facts, factors, and pros and cons which will go a far way in allaying said scepticism where or when it’s identified.

Justice Panton would do well to spend more time considering the cultural and historical norms and traditions in Jamaica and applying them to the debate.

For example: Is it only a perception that there is more than one brand of justice in Jamaica?

Is it only a perception that one’s social class will affect one’s call for justice in Jamaica?

Is it only a perception that your financial standing will affect your call for justice in Jamaica?

Is it only a perception that one’s skin colour is a factor, when such should be immaterial?

If it is true to say that the aforementioned are merely perceptions, then I humbly submit to Justice Panton that, in our Jamaican context, you’ll be astounded to know that certain kinds of perceptions are a lot more consequential than if they were the reality itself.

In the final analysis, what Jamaicans want to be assured of is that justice for one means justice for all and that there is equal accessibility to this justice.

One of the vociferous arguments, for example, in favour of the CCJ over the UK-based Privy Council as far as Jamaicans are concerned is that the Privy Council, by comparison, is prohibitively expensive.

Therefore, I would have thought that it would be these and other comparisons that Justice Panton would be stressing in greater detail rather than blindly advocating the cutting of ties with the Privy Council.

Justice Panton would do well to compare the cost of submitting a case to one court over the other; the quality of justice to be handed down by one court over the other; the extent to which the justices of both courts are insulated from diverse influences; and whether the pronouncements handed down are more vulnerable to being tainted by the self-interest of judges for political or any other reason in one court more than the other.

Are these not the kinds of hard one-to-one comparisons Justice Panton needs to be bringing to the public so that people can choose for themselves rather than him appearing to be championing the cause of the CCJ.

Please be more careful, Justice Panton, lest you cause people to second-guess what I am sure is your noble intention.

Derrick D Simon

Golden Spring

derrickdsimon@yahoo.com