Review of Privy Council Practice by Mance & Turner

22 Indiana International and Comparative Law Review 267, 2012

This piece is designed to be a practitioner-friendly comparative article looking at each of the three major decisions of African supreme courts striking down the death penalty for murder (Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi), as well as summarizing the earlier jurisprudence in the United States, South Asia, and the Commonwealth Caribbean. This litigation, which has succeeded in removing some of the most arbitrary aspects of capital punishment in the developing world, has instilled international human rights norms in domestic constitutional jurisprudence.

O Direito , 2022

RESUMO: Este artigo jurídico teve a finalidade de familiarizar a comunidade jurídica de língua portuguesa com a problemática da pena de morte automática e obrigatória nos Estados caribenhos de língua oficial inglesa. Examinou-se o entendimento do Comitê de Direitos Humanos da Organização das Nações Unidos e a sua ressonância na atualidade, sobretudo em Estados caribenhos anglófonos que já foram objeto de manifestação do Comitê. Dialogou-se o posicionamento do Comitê de Direitos Humanos da ONU com a jurisprudência da Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos, mormente com os acórdãos paradigmáticos dos casos Hilaire e Boyce, comparando-se com o acórdão do Tribunal Africano dos Direitos do Homem e dos Povos no caso Rajabu. Analisaram-se as raízes coloniais da pena capital mandatória nos Estados independentes de língua oficial inglesa, cotejando-se a evolução da legislação britânica com os impasses constitucionais, marchas e contramarchas, enfrentados nos Estados caribenhos anglófonos. Contextualizou-se a atuação sui generis do Comitê Judiciário do Privy Council do Reino Unido nos Estados caribenhos de língua oficial inglesa e as dificuldades enfrentadas pela Corte Caribenha de Justiça para se firmar como Tribunal de Última Instância dos Estados caribenhos anglófonos. Verificaram-se as tendências da jurisprudência do Comitê Judiciário do Privy Council na década de 2010, no que concerne à controvérsia em torno da índole automática e compulsória da pena de morte nos Estados caribenhos de língua oficial inglesa, em cotejo com acórdãos paradigmáticos do próprio Privy Council de décadas anteriores e com os julgamentos emblemáticos da Corte de Justiça do Caribe, buscando-se assinalar eventuais pontos de convergência e divergência entre o pensamento jurisprudencial de ambos os Tribunais de Última Instância do Caribe anglófono. Procedeu-se à pesquisa do tipo bibliográfica, alicerçada em análise de conteúdo. As principais fontes bibliográficas consultadas foram pronunciamentos do Comitê de Direitos Humanos das Nações Unidos, bem como arestos da Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos, do Comitê Judiciário do Privy Council e da Corte Caribenha de Justiça, combinados com as legislações penais britânica e caribenha, bem assim com o estudo comparado do Direito Constitucional Positivo dos Estados caribenhos de língua oficial inglesa, além de artigos científicos e capítulos de obras colegiadas da literatura de língua inglesa especializada em temáticas pertinentes à pena de morte no Caribe anglófono, no que se refere à sua conjuntura política, histórica, sociológica e jurídica e à prestação jurisdicional a respeito levada a efeito pela Corte IDH, pelo Privy Council e pela CCJ. Percebeu-se notável avanço da CCJ na construção de jurisprudência própria, que assegura ao Poder Judiciário margem discricionária mínima para a avaliar, caso a caso, a imposição da pena de morte e se vale de hermenêutica decolonial, a transcender a doutrina da imunidade constitucional da legislação pré-colonial. Palavras-chave: Caribe anglófono; colonialismo; jurisprudência internacional; pena de morte obrigatória. ABSTRACT: The purpose of this legal paper was to familiarize the Portuguese-speaking legal community with the issue of automatic and mandatory death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean States. The understanding of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and its resonance today was analyzed, especially in English-speaking Caribbean States that have already been under the Committee’s manifestation. The position of the UN Human Rights Committee was discussed with the court precedents of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, especially with the paradigmatic judgments of the Hilaire and Boyce cases, compared with the judgment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in the Rajabu case. The colonial roots of mandatory capital punishment in independent English-speaking States were analyzed, comparing the evolution of the British legislation with the constitutional deadlocks, marches and countermarches faced in the English-speaking Caribbean States. The sui generis performance of the Judicial Committee of the United Kingdom’s Privy Council in the English-speaking Caribbean States and the difficulties faced by the Caribbean Court of Justice in establishing itself as the Court of Final Appeal of the English-speaking Caribbean States were put into context. The trends in the precedents of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the decade of 2010 were verified with respect to the controversy regarding the automatic and compulsory nature of the death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean States, in comparison with the Privy Council’s own paradigmatic judgments of previous decades and the emblematic judgments of the Caribbean Court of Justice, seeking to emphasize possible points of convergence and divergence between the position adopted by both Courts of Final Appeal in the English-speaking Caribbean. A bibliographic research was conducted based on content analysis. The main bibliographic sources consulted were statements from the United Nations Human Rights Committee, as well as opinions from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Caribbean Court of Justice, combined with British and Caribbean criminal legislation, as well as with the comparative study of the Positive Constitutional Law of the English-speaking Caribbean States, as well as academic papers and chapters of collegiate studies of the English-language literature specialized in themes relevant to death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean, in relation to its political, historical, sociological and legal situation and the jurisdictional provision in this regard carried out by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Privy Council and the CCJ. Keywords: colonialism; English-speaking Caribbean; international case law; mandatory death penalty.

New Zealand Universities Law Review, 2002

New Zealand currently retains the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as its final court of appeal. The recent announcement by the Attorney-General of New Zealand of a five-judge Supreme Court to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council represents the penultimate stage in removing the right of appeals to the Privy Council. This has been all but inevitable since the release by the Attorney-General of a discussion paper proposing the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council. This was motivated by a political desire to end appeals to a London-based tribunal. While Miss Wilson might like to have all-party political support for her measure, she did not receive whole-hearted support from the legal community - or from much of the business sector. Before abolition of the right of appeal to the Privy Council, the Government and the legal profession needed to be agreed about a court structure and exactly how it would work. Although Miss Wilson has stated that the legal profession has itself accepted the need for ending appeals, it is unlikely that this represents the real attitude of the legal profession, or the business community. This paper explores reasons for this. And in looking at arguments for and against the retention of appeal right we will see aspects of a conflict between political aspirations and legal and business pragmatism. The question of the degree to which a judiciary should be international or national, and the question of whose opinions should prevail, judges and lawyers, or politicians, is crucial, and goes far beyond simple questions of national identity.

2013

This thesis explores the roles played by implied constitutional principles in fundamental rights cases in the common law jurisdictions of Canada, Australia, the Commonwealth Caribbean, and the United Kingdom. The two principles selected for this research are the separation of powers and the rule of law, both of which are relied upon in courts in common law states. The thesis examines the types of cases in which such principles are used, the possible reasons for the appeal of these principles, and the functions that they play in fundamental rights adjudication. The thesis begins with a brief discussion of the applications of the rule of law and the separation of powers, outlining the content of these principles as applied by the courts. However, the bulk of the analysis throughout the thesis is concerned with a thematic study of the functions played by the principles. It is argued that the principles are used as interpretative aids, as independent grounds for invalidating legislation...

2016

Ten years is not an exceedingly long time in the life of a court, especially a complex court such as the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) that has two distinct jurisdictions: the original jurisdiction - to treat with regional issues falling under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas; and an appellate jurisdiction - to hear appeals of law within the domestic legal sphere, involving a wide range of subject matters, whether that be criminal law, civil law, constitutional law, human rights and the like.

2016

There remains deep uncertainty regarding the growing transnational nature and scope of law. This uncertainty is in part answered by, but also fuelled by, current cosmopolitan theories. Such theories -- including Jeremy Waldron’s conception of a ‘ius gentium’ as a body of principles shared by the legal world, and Neil Walker’s articulation of ‘global law’ -- are decidedly cosmopolitan in nature by articulating legal orders and systems that see the individual as part of a shared human community. While these theories make valuable contributions to legal studies, they have overreached by asserting an extensive level of transnational consensus, consensus which is not fully represented in current transnational dialogue. What is needed is a framework that balances the cosmopolitan impulse with awareness of the current experience of transnational law, and the historical and cultural limitations on transnational dialogue. With this contextual background in mind, I propose the idea of ‘bounde...

Human Rights Law Review, 2018

On 14 December 2017, the Supreme Court of Kenya found the mandatory death penalty unconstitutional in Muruatetu & Anor v Republic. The Court held that, in the absence of individualized consideration for offenders in a sentencing hearing, the mandatory death penalty violated constitutional provisions related to the right to a fair trial, the right to human dignity, the right to life and the right to equality.