Court of Appeal president to fill a gap

Appeal court President Justice Marva McDonald-Bishop has begun to pen a book chronicling the history of that court after an AI search bot informed her there is a “dearth” of information about the institution. McDonald-Bishop, who took the reins of the institution in 2024, becoming the first woman ever to hold that post, says upon being appointed she decided to “understand the court” she was “called upon to lead” and, as such, began to search for historical documentation. “I started my research by digging up the Hansard reports from Parliament and other literature, only to be told by AI that there is a ‘dearth of information’ on the Court of Appeal and that persons concentrate more on the Privy Council and other courts of the Commonwealth,” McDonald-Bishop told individuals attending a recent Judiciary Day Public Lecture at the court on King Street in downtown Kingston.

“Then AI said to me, ‘If you were to contribute to the scholarship about the Court of Appeal that would be a powerful contribution to constitutionalism in Jamaica.’ So I decided to start my book about the Court of Appeal and today is just a chapter from that book,” McDonald-Bishop, who delivered the guest lecture titled, ‘The Court of Appeal of Jamaica: Its path to institutional independence and national standing’, stated. Noting that the court’s “institutional story is inseparable from Jamaica’s own journey into constitutional independence”, the appeal court head said to trace its development is to “trace part of Jamaica’s institutional coming of age. The movement from inherited arrangements to a national appellate court capable of promoting coherence in Jamaican law and safeguarding justice for our people,” she said.

A brief history of the court on its website says it was established by the Constitution of Jamaica when the country gained its political independence from Britain on August 6, 1962 and, therefore, like Jamaica, celebrated its 60th anniversary on August 6, 2022. It said the court’s structure and jurisdiction were, however, crafted by a law that was passed on July 30, 1962 and brought into effect on the 5th of August that year — one day before Independence Day. The legislation regulating the court’s authority and jurisdiction is now called the Judicature (Appellate Jurisdiction) Act.

The court succeeded a previous Court of Appeal which was, however, a part of the Supreme Court of …