Over 150 Appellate and Trial judges, Magistrates, Court Registrars, Court Administrators and other judicial officers from throughout the Caribbean are meeting in Willemstad, Curacao for the 5th biennial Conference of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers (CAJO).
The Conference is being hosted by the Judiciary of the Joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba. At Thursday’s opening ceremony, the delegates present heard remarks from President of the Joint Court, Her Honour Mme. Justice Eunice Saleh, as well as from the Hon Mme. Zita Jesus-Leito, Minister of Traffic, Transport and Urban Planning, and from the Chairman of CAJO, Hon. Mr. Justice Adrian Saunders. Thursday’s keynote address was delivered by the Hon. Mr. Justice Denys Barrow, Judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice, and was focused on the delays in the justice system. He noted that, “timely delivery of judgments is a marker of judicial efficiency and part of a court’s case management obligation. It is a basic strategy, adopted at the CCJ, for example, to premise that case management begins on the day a case is filed and this aggressive approach to case management enables a court very early to set a timeline for hearing a case and for delivery of judgment”. On Friday 29th September, Professor Ernst Hirsch Ballin, President of the Asser Institute, will deliver the feature address. Quite apart from the representatives of the Dutch- and English-speaking Caribbean judiciaries who are present, the CAJO conference is also being attended by judges and resource persons from the United States, the Netherlands and the International Union of Judicial Officers.
A plenary session was organised for the first day of the conference surrounding this theme. At the session the Hon. Mr. Justice Maarten Feteris, President of the Supreme Court of The Netherlands and the Rt. Hon. Sir Dennis Byron, President of the Caribbean Court of Justice shared their thoughts and reflections on the Conference theme. During the course of the Conference, CAJO will hold its biennial General Meeting and elect a new Management Committee. At the closing ceremony on Saturday, it is expected that CAJO will publish a Conference Resolution and announce the venue of the 2019 Conference.
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