PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Justice Chile Eboe-Osuji was sworn in on Tuesday as a choose of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Courtroom of Justice (CCJ) with the Courtroom’s President, Justice Adrian Saunders, saying, “I don’t doubt that (he) will make an essential contribution to the event of our Caribbean jurisprudence.”
The brand new choose took the oath of workplace earlier than Trinidad and Tobago’s President, Christine Kangaroo, on the President’s Home.
“The CCJ has been loyal in pursuing its imaginative and prescient of turning into a mannequin of judicial excellence. In the present day, the CCJ has taken one other essential step within the quest for the imaginative and prescient by including Justice Eboe-Osuji to its ranks.
“Justice Eboe-Osuji is an excellent authorized thoughts and a gifted jurist whose lengthy and distinguished profession has, as we’ve got heard, spanned many international locations and establishments,” President Kangaroo mentioned.
Justice Eboe-Osuji, the primary Nigerian-Canadian appointed to the Courtroom, replaces Justice Andrew Burgess, who retired on April 11, 2025.
The Regional Judicial and Authorized Providers Fee (RJLSC), an unbiased physique of 11 people liable for appointing the judges and workers of the Courtroom, chosen him from a pool of 26 candidates.
Justice Saunders described the method for the recruitment as “one in every of, if not probably the most sacred position carried out by the RJLSC, is the appointment of Judges of the CCJ.
“The choice and appointment course of is rigorous, aggressive, merit-based, and fully unbiased of any political involvement,” he mentioned, welcoming the brand new choose whereas indicating that “‘Mr. Justice Eboe-Osuji has an impeccable document of service as a lawyer and jurist.
“ I don’t doubt that (he) will make an essential contribution to creating our Caribbean jurisprudence.’
Justice Eboe-Osuji is a world jurist who brings felony and human rights regulation experience to the CCJ. He practiced regulation as a barrister earlier than trial courts in Nigeria and Canada and performed appeals earlier than the Courtroom of Enchantment for Ontario (Canada) and the Supreme Courtroom of Canada.
He beforehand served as a Decide and President of the Worldwide Felony Courtroom and because the Authorized Advisor to the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights. He additionally led the writing of amicus curiae submissions to the European Courtroom of Human Rights and the USA Supreme Courtroom. His various authorized background additionally contains a number of posts as a authorized advisor, revealed creator, and professor.
He informed the ceremony that ‘the Courtroom serves its function not solely as a court docket for CARICOM nations to resolve disputes arising from the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas but in addition there isn’t any have to look past the seas for a last court docket of attraction, given the standard of judges we’ve got on that Bench and it’s an unbelievable honor for me to have been chosen”.
Judges of the CCJ, which was established in 2001 to interchange the London-based Privy Council because the area’s highest and last Courtroom, are appointed to carry workplace till the age of seventy-two, whereas the President of the Courtroom holds workplace for a non-renewable time period of seven years.
