Time and Transcendence: Narrating Higher Authority at the Caribbean Court of Justice

IntroductionOn a brilliant morning in Port of Spain, Trinidad in November 2013, Serena, the sharply dressed and well-spoken Customer Service representative at the Caribbean Court of Justice (hereafter "CCJ" or "the Court"), guided a group of Trinidadian attorneys through a courthouse tour.1I had accompanied Serena several times before on tours through the Court and appreciated her natural, efficient, and informative narration. She could move swiftly through the building pointing out highlights, details, facts, and little-known facts, educating her audience throughout and mixing in enough audienceappropriate "Trini flavor"-dropping in bits of local creole, drawing on shared Carnival knowledge, or mentioning familiar names and places-to keep the tour light, enjoyable, and engaging.As usual, Serena's tour began in the Registry of the Court, and, as usual, after several opening remarks and a brief introduction to the workings of this office, she directed the attorneys' attention to a mini-museum located within the Registry lobby. She explained: "Now, a lot of people think that the idea of setting up a regional final court of appeal was a recent idea,"But we have a letter ... from as far back as 1901. It was written in the Jamaican Gleaner in the "Letters to the Editor" suggesting that the Privy Council, because of the distance from the colonies, they would have been too far to really dispense true justice. And the author suggested that we set up our own regional final court of appeal.As the attorneys absorbed this information, she continued:In 1970, at a conference of heads of government, the idea for a regional final court of appeal was put forward. However, it was not until 1989 that the heads of government agreed to establish the court. In 1999, Trinidad & Tobago announced that we would house the court here. And the heads of government approved the Agreement Establishing the Court. In 2001 the agreement was signed.With an indication of her hand, Serena directed her audience's gaze to a series of photographs displayed on the walls. She explained,On the walls we basically have a pictorial depicting the establishment of the court from the very inception of the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas. What I find interesting about this is that even as far back as the public consultations you see people who are involved in the court up until now....Serena pointed out a couple of familiar faces in the photographs, including the current President of the CCJ and a founding architect of the CCJ, and then allowed the visitors a minute or so to look at the pictures.These photos loosely followed the narrative Serena had presented. Though the 1901 newspaper article was not displayed (but it is available on the CCJ website (see Caribbean Court of Justice 2015), as Serena usually noted), three black-and-white photos under the label "The Beginning" helped bolster Serena's claim to the CCJ's deep history. Two of these photos, as the labels indicated, depicted the "Signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas," an event that took place in 1973 and created the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), something I discuss in more detail below. The third photo showed the "Signing of the Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice," which took place, as Serena had just told the tour group, in 2001. Given its recent date, it was unclear why that particular photo was black-and-white, but its black-and-whiteness did seem to impart to it an air of antiquity.What is perplexing about this presentation of the Court's establishment, through Serena's words and the photos on the wall, was its emphasis on the Court's agedness. As all of these attorneys likely knew, this Court was not at all old. In fact, most tours, such as this one, were prompted by the newness and novelty of, and, thus, the lack of familiarity with, the Court. It is a regional tribunal intended to serve a large swath of independent (mostly) English-speaking Caribbean states that was signed into being in 2001 through the execution of two documents: the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas Establishing the Caribbean Community Including the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (commonly abbreviated to the Revised Treaty), which called for the creation of the Court, and the subsequent Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice, which officially set forth the terms for its existence. …