The Information Commissioner has recently ordered the Governor of Bermuda to release records relating to complaints against two senior judges in Bermuda. This is after the Governor had initially refused to release the requested records.
Click here to read the Royal Gazette article and the full decision of the Information Commissioner
Currently if you have a complaint against a judge in Bermuda it gets referred by the Governor of Bermuda to a non-statutory body called the Judicial and Legal Services Committee (the “JLSC”) made up of the Chief Justice of Bermuda, the President of the Court of Appeal of Bermuda, and other ad hoc appointees.
The JLSC’s role is to advise the Governor on what action to take or not take when a complaint is made against a judge. However, in practice, it is the JLSC who decides whether or not to dismiss a complaint. And the JLSC always dismisses complaints against a judge.
Since the JLSC is a non-statutory body, a complainant has no statutory right of appeal, no right of judicial review, no right to see a copy of the response from the judge that is being complained about before the JLSC dismisses your complaint, and hence no right to reply to that response.
It is a foregone conclusion that your complaint will never ever be referred to a hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal as is required under section 6(8) of the Bermuda Constitution but will be summarily dismissed by the Committee. Since the Guidelines for Judicial Conduct for Judges in Bermuda came into existence in 2006, there have been numerous complaints against judges but not a single complaint has ever been referred to a tribunal for a hearing. Every complaint has been summarily dismissed by the Committee before it can get to a tribunal.
Under section 74 of the Bermuda Constitution, the Governor shall, if he / she considers that the question of removing a judge from office for inability or misbehaviour ought to be investigated, appoint a tribunal, consisting of a Chairman and not less than two other members selected by the Governor from among persons who hold or have held high judicial office to inquire into the matter and to report on the facts and advise the Governor whether he /she should request that the removal of that judge should be referred by Her Majesty to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This section further states that a judge shall be removed from office by the Governor if the question of the removal of that judge from office has been referred by Her Majesty to the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty’s Privy Council and the Judicial Committee has advised Her Majesty that the judge ought to be removed from office. No Governor has ever exercised his / her power under this section of the Constitution.
The above section of the Constitution only applies to Supreme Court (in Canada Superior Court) judges. It does not apply to “assistant judges”, “acting judges” “the Registrar or Assistant Registrar of the Supreme Court” or to “magistrates”. The Governor has no Constitutional power to remove those judges.
The current Governor of Bermuda is Rena Lalgie. I recently made a request that she exercise her power under section 74 of the Bermuda Constitution to investigate the current Chief Justice of Bermuda – a guy named Narinder Hargun. She replied that she needed more time to consider my request because she has been unable to obtain relevant legal advice. I predict that she will not exercise her Constitutional power. She could always prove me wrong by appointing a tribunal but I doubt that she will.
According to the above decision of the Information Commissioner, a complainant has no right to know who the members of the JLSC were that dismissed their complaint. This means that you have no way of knowing if the members of the JLSC had a conflict of interest or other bias or lack of impartiality. Hence the question, who judges the judges in Bermuda?
#accesstojustice #accesstoinformation #Bermuda #judicialconduct