Quousque Tandem , Privy Council? Denial of LGBTQI + Rights in the Caribbean by the British Judiciary

Abstract This chapter argues that British Supreme Court judges sitting on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) represent harmful remnants of British colonial power. The JCPC has limited progress of human rights in anglophone Caribbean nations (ACNs), resulting in a position worse than before their independence. Criminalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex (LGBTQI+) people persists in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago via complicity of the JCPC. As apex court of the Caribbean British Overseas Territories (CBOTs), the JCPC has also contracted, rather than expanded, human rights. It has reinstated segregation on grounds of sexual orientation where this had ceased to exist through judicial self-determination by Caribbean judges interpreting their constitutional arrangements as protecting human dignity above all else. The JCPC recognizes certain authoritative legal interpretations conflict with theirs, eg including interpretations of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) but has chosen a different path. Instead, deviating from established principles of constitutional interpretation, the JCPC has developed a novel constitutional theory detrimental to human dignity and equality of Caribbean people. This has been particularly impactful for one vulnerable minority: LGBTQI + people. This chapter concludes by questioning the role of the UK government in retaining such a colonial court, given its adverse impacts on human rights for Caribbean people.