Judge says you have to be in elite club to move to Appeal court

High Court judge Herbert Volney said Thursday he want not bypassed for promotion to the Appeal Court. The outspoken judge said he had told the Judicial and Legal Services Commission that he did not want to be considered for the job.

And in a broadside at the Judiciary he said in order for a judge to climb to the Appeal Court “you must be one in the elite club called the Judicial Education Institute.”

Media reports had said that Volney was among five puisne were bypassed for promotion. And on Tuesday Chief Justice Ivor Archie confirmed that Justices Peter Jamadar, Alice Yorke-Soo Hon and Nolan Bereaux had been elevated to the Appeal Court.

Volney disputes that, saying, “I was not bypassed.”

He told the Trinidad Guardian and the chief justice he was not interested in moving up to the Appeal court.

And he suggested that the choices announced by the CJ “would not go down well” with some of the judges.

“You must never express an independent viewpoint even though it may be the correct one to propound...You must attend all the invitations sent to you by officialdom in order to rub shoulders or appear to do so,” he told the paper.

“You must be from the Christian right and must be seen to be involved whether as Chancellor, pastor, singer of all the psalms in the incantations of religious fervour.”

He claimed in order for a judge to climb to the Court of Appeal “you must know your benediction and must be known for your piety.”

He said to be elevated to the higher court, a judge “must not only follow the obvious, but in their script must appear to be pleasing to all and offensive to none.

“In order to be an Appeal Court judge, you must be one in the elite club called the Judicial Education Institute where membership is largely determined by whether you have a godfather or godmother already in the nest,” Volney said.

And he said not all judges can be members of this exclusive club. He said with the exception of Justice Bereaux, all past members of this elitist group had gone on to the Appeal Court.

“I, like Carlton Best, Rajendra Narine, Humphrey Stollmeyer, Gregory Smith do not stand a snowball’s chance in hell when it comes to be considered for promotion...We are independent judges,” he said.

“We will rule, and continue to rule, in accordance with the law, our conscience, the facts as we find them to be, with integrity and justly.”