President of the Guyana Bar Association, Kamal Ramkarran has called for the urgent review of rules and laws guiding the work of the Guyana Court of Appeal. He said those rules, which have been in existence for over fifty years, are hurting the functioning of the Appeal’s Court.
Speaking at the opening of the 2026 Law year this morning, Mr. Ramkarran said while there has been infrastructural and administrative changes at the Court of Appeal, including the appointment of additional Judges, the time that cases take to be called up remain unacceptable.
He said while there have been improvements at the High Court in relation to case backlogs, more work needs to be done in this regard at the Appeals Court.
“The system becomes the way it does because we all accept it. The position is the same with application for leave to appeal from the full court as well as the application to the Caribbean Court of Justice although the tend not to take as long as the appeal to come on for hearing. But I have no doubt that the energetic new leadership of the Court of Appeal together with the unprecedented number of new Judges there will quickly and bring us to the same position we are at the High Court,” the Bar Association President said.
Mr. Ramkarran said the Caribbean Court of Justice, which has been in existence for 20 years, has already had six sets of Appellate jurisdiction rules and there is nothing stopping Guyana’s Appeal Court from doing same.
“We need not to be wedded to rules and laws which no longer serve their purpose, we must be the master of our rules and procedures and not the other way around. Perhaps, because of those old rules, laws and other procedural default, appeals now take forever to come up for hearing,” Ramkarran said.
However, he expressed optimism that things will change for the better with the new leadership of the Court of Appeal.
He also hailed the digital push of the local Courts, especially its move to virtual hearing and e-filing which he noted, have transformed the practice of law. He called for fixed rules for virtual hearings to decide which cases are to be heard virtually and which should be heard in person.
“We have come a far way but there is still much we can do to operate at full capacity, other countries in Caribbean have websites where judgments are uploaded, we need to do the same. Our judgments ares scattered all over and many of them are not known by practitioners except by chance. We need to build and develop a database for our judgements which we can all relay on and every judge who deliver a judgement within a reasonable time no matter if it’s a note of extemperate judgment, judgements doesn’t need to be scholarship wordy for publication, they simply need to show the basic reason for the decision,” Ramkarran stated.
Further, Ramkarran also issued a call for transcripts to be available for every single hearing, adding that it increases accountability within the Court System.
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