Law officials from the Caribbean Community (Caricom)...

Law officials from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) nations met in Jamaica to discuss how to set up and pay for a proposed Caribbean court that would replace the British Privy Council as the region's final court of appeal. Leaders of the 13-member Caricom group drafted a proposal in March to create the Caribbean Court of Justice within two years. Britain's Privy Council, comprised of members of the House of Lords, handles appeals in both civil and criminal cases for many former British colonies in the Caribbean. In recent years, much of the attention on the appeals process has focused on use of the death penalty. British authorities and human rights groups have sought to get executions halted, while many Caribbean nations view the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. The Jamaican Bar Association expressed strong reservations about the region's readiness to establish the court, arguing among other things that Caribbean governments lacked the money to properly fund it.