Commonwealth States and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: Cutting the Umbilical Cord

Harold Young (Georgia State University) - Why did so many states shedding British colonial rule nevertheless choose to retain the British Privy Council as the highest court of appeal? Drawing on examples from across 50 states of the Commonwealth, this paper explores what factors influenced the decision to retain the Privy Council at independence, and why some states subsequently opted to sever ties. Building on Dahl’s theory (1957) the paper asserts that states not only choose the final court of appeal that they most expect to be an ally but may move to change a court that undermines or seems likely to undermine policy preferences. Understanding this phenomena across the British Commonwealth may provide comparative insights into how this court is viewed by the governing coalition and what it can tell us about how states may view other extraterritorial courts such as the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the African Court of Justice and Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Harold Young is a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His research interests include comparative judicial politics in the British Commonwealth and the United States, the death penalty/capital punishment in the Commonwealth Caribbean and the responsibility to protect (R2P). He has lectured at Georgia State University and Oglethorpe University in Atlanta and presented at numerous conferences including most recently at the the African Heritage Association Conference (Atlanta Georgia, 2014), the Midwest Political Science Association Conference (Chicago Illinois, 2014) and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Conference in 2014 (Wilmington Delaware, 2014).