A controversial sudden shake-up on a high-stakes regional legal panel at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has ignited open conflict among senior justices, with serious accusations of executive overreach and threats to judicial independence now dividing the court.
In a June 26, 2026 email directive delivered without public explanation, CCJ President Winston Anderson notified sitting panel justices Chile Eboe-Osuji and Arif Bulkan that he had determined a restructuring of the panel hearing the high-profile D’Almada v Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Caricom case was “desirable”. Anderson removed Eboe-Osuji from the panel entirely, replacing him with four justices including himself: Denys Barrow, Maureen Rajnauth-Lee, Chantal Ononaiwu, and Arif Bulkan, who retained his spot.
Eboe-Osuji, who had already been part of the pre-hearing deliberations for the case, pushed back against his removal the same day Anderson’s order landed. He detailed a prior institutional agreement that directly tied his inclusion on the D’Almada panel to a long-running legal debate over a foundational regional precedent. According to Eboe-Osuji, during deliberations for the separate Barrow Referral matter, counsel had raised questions about whether the earlier Bhagwansingh ruling established a rule barring a national from bringing suit against their own state. Eboe-Osuji had pushed to clarify the relationship between Bhagwansingh and the 2009 TCL v Guyana ruling, which had formally affirmed the rule that citizens cannot sue their own state. Anderson had argued that the clarification did not belong in the Barrow Referral judgment, and that the issue would be directly addressed in the upcoming D’Almada case. To break the impasse, Justice Peter Jamadar had proposed that Eboe-Osuji retain his spot on the D’Almada panel to lead that discussion, a compromise Eboe-Osuji accepted when he agreed to drop his demand for an immediate ruling in the Barrow Referral matter.
“With D’Almada scheduled for a hearing next week, I’m sure you see difficulty with determining—with no reason indicated—that it is desirable to remove me from D’Almada,” Eboe-Osuji wrote in his immediate response.
Four days after the removal order, Jamadar became the second sitting justice to publicly challenge the decision, calling for urgent clarification from Anderson in an email copied to all new panel members. Jamadar pressed Anderson to confirm whether Eboe-Osuji’s removal was limited only to the D’Almada hearing, or if it extended to all upcoming panels, including informal proceedings where the official CCJ judicial robe is not required. The question tied to an ongoing internal dispute over dress codes: Anderson had previously proposed formalizing a mandatory robe rule to the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission (RJLSC), citing a need to uphold the court’s tradition and dignity, and had raised objections to Eboe-Osuji wearing formal traditional Nigerian attire to court.
Jamadar noted he was scheduled to sit alongside Eboe-Osuji just that same morning in the Robateau v Robateau case, an informal proceeding that did not require robes, and needed immediate clarity to avoid procedural disruption. He also reminded Anderson of the binding precedent set in the 2012 Khan v Mc Nicholls TT case, which touched on judicial dress codes and institutional procedures.
In a detailed seven-page letter sent to Anderson on July 2, copied to all CCJ judges, Eboe-Osuji issued a formal, scathing rebuke of the CCJ president’s actions, accusing Anderson of outright abuse of power and a deliberate campaign to undermine long-standing judicial independence at the regional court.
Eboe-Osuji claimed that immediately after taking office as CCJ president, Anderson launched a unilateral, single-minded effort to curb long-standing court practices, specifically banning judges from publishing separate concurring opinions in CCJ cases, and even dissenting opinions in Caribbean Court of Appeal Tribunal (CCAT) cases. The move came as a shock to many long-serving justices, Eboe-Osuji noted, because the CCJ had built a reputation for robust pluralism in judicial opinions prior to Anderson’s tenure.
He then laid out the inescapable conclusion he had drawn about the real motivation behind his removal from the D’Almada panel, arguing that the official claim tied to dress code was a thin pretext for a legal disagreement that threatens the court’s integrity.
Pointing to the inconsistent application of the alleged dress code policy—Anderson removed him from D’Almada but allowed him to sit on the earlier Robateau hearing the same week, which also did not require robes—Eboe-Osuji exposed the logical flaw in the dress code justification.
“The conclusion is inescapable that you removed me from D’Almada because you and I disagree on a point of law that foreseeably defines the fundamental question in that case,” he wrote. “You have been itching to reverse or chisel down the decision that all seven judges of the CCJ rendered in TCL vs Guyana 2009, when you were not yet at the court.”
Eboe-Osuji confirmed that Anderson, a former legal academic, has repeatedly stated publicly to fellow justices that he believes the landmark TCL v Guyana ruling was wrongly decided, a position Eboe-Osuji openly rejects. The core legal question at the heart of TCL is the central issue to be decided in D’Almada, a fact Anderson himself had acknowledged in prior discussions.
Addressing the dress code claims head-on, Eboe-Osuji noted that he has participated in more than 30 formal CCJ hearings since joining the court, the majority of which were held online and did not require judges to wear robes. He added that in the post-colonial modern era, it is widely accepted that judges may wear formal national attire or European-style business formal dress for court proceedings, rather than mandatory traditional British-style robes. The CCJ’s founding agreement does not grant the court’s president unilateral authority to impose dress rules, he argued, and any formal policy change should be agreed by the full body of judges.
Eboe-Osuji said he made no apology for wearing formal Nigerian attire, noting he had only done so on two occasions: one status conference and one judgment delivery, and no fellow judge raised any objection on either occasion. He also confirmed that Anderson had admitted no external parties, including litigants or their counsel, had raised concerns about his attire. Instead, Anderson told Eboe-Osuji the objection came from a junior judicial counsel working at the court—a non-judge staffer whose opinion had now led to the disciplinary removal of a senior sitting justice from a high-profile panel. The revelation, Eboe-Osuji made clear, was deeply surprising and damaging to the court’s institutional norms.
