Distinguished jurist and former judge of the International Court of Justice Patrick Robinson has sought to clarify a January 7 Gleaner report emanating from his column published on January 4, 2026, in the Sunday Gleaner.

In that column Robinson, also a former president of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal, held that as a matter of principle, the chief justice is the chief judge of Jamaica and is, therefore, chief among all judges, including those in the Court of Appeal and as such “it should not be possible for a Jamaican Court to overturn a decision of the chief justice”.

According to Justice Robinson, on appointment, the chief justice should sit in the Court of Appeal as its president.

Robinson, in a subsequent letter to the editor, described as a “misrepresentation” the
Gleaner’s interpretation of his submission in the January 7 article headlined ‘Former UN Judge urges reform – Says it should not be possible for Jamaican Court to overturn a Chief Justice’.

Said Justice Robinson, “The writer states that I have called for ‘constitutional reform to prevent Jamaican courts from overturning a chief justice’s ruling (following) the Court of Appeal appeal’s decision to quash a 2019 murder conviction after ruling that actions of Chief Justice Brian Sykes denied the then accused man a fair trial’. This is a complete misrepresentation of the last paragraph of the article, published January 4, 2026, captioned, ‘Analysing Common Law Adversarial and Civil Law Inquisitorial Legal System’.

Below is the full text of Justice Robinson’s letter in response to that article.

Dear Editor,

I am obliged to respond to the online story of the 7th January, 2026, which has a side note, “former UN judge urges reform, says ‘it should not be possible for Jamaican court to overturn a chief justice’”.

The writer states that I have called for “constitutional reform to prevent Jamaican courts from overturning a chief justice’s ruling. It follows the Court of Appeal appeal’s decision to quash a 2019 murder conviction after ruling that actions of Chief Justice Brian Sykes denied the then accused man a fair trial”.

This is a complete misrepresentation of the last paragraph of the article, published January 4, 2026, captioned, ‘Analysing Common Law Adversarial and Civil Law Inquisitorial Legal System’.

There are three key sentences in that paragraph: “The chief justice is the chief judge of Jamaica and is, therefore, chief among all judges, including those in the Court of Appeal. It should not be possible for a Jamaican court to overturn a decision of the chief justice. On appointment, the chief justice should sit in the Court of Appeal as its president”.

When these three sentences are read together, it is crystal clear that what I am saying is that if the chief justice takes what I consider to be his rightful place in the Court of Appeal as its president, it would not be possible for any Jamaican court to overrule him or her, although, of course — and this is acknowledged in the last sentence of the paragraph — the Court of Appeal can be overruled by what is now our highest court, the United Kingdom Privy Council, a position that I hope will change soon.

In Barbados the chief justice is ex-officio a judge of the High Court, but sits in the Court of Appeal as its president. The position is the same in Trinidad and Tobago. In fact, my information is that in Caricom it is only The Bahamas that has a structure similar to ours, in which the chief justice sits in the Supreme Court, where, of course, he or she can be overruled by the Court of Appeal.

I was not referring to the 2019 Court of Appeal judgement that overruled a murder conviction in which the trial judge was Chief Justice Sykes. My position, which is one of principle, is that the chief justice, as the chief judge in Jamaica, should sit in the highest court in Jamaica, which is the Court of Appeal, not the Supreme Court.

I also wish to clarify that in the last paragraph of my article I addressed the office of chief justice, and not any specific holder of that office.

In sum, the writer of the online comment fell into error by focusing on one sentence in the paragraph to the exclusion of reading the paragraph as a whole, in particular, sentence that on appointment, the chief justice should sit in the Court of Appeal.