The legislature, executive and judiciary make up our three branches of government.\u00a0 In a democracy each should be scrutinized.\u00a0 Citizens pay the salaries of the leaders and officers of each branch through taxation.\u00a0 We have a right to know what they are doing and to question if there is a better way to accomplish common goals.<\/p>\n
It is normal for the politicians to be criticized.\u00a0 We elect them.\u00a0 We feel entitled to examine what they do in the public sphere.\u00a0 This issue is different in The Bahamas when it comes to judges, however.<\/p>\n
Maintaining the integrity of the judiciary is important.\u00a0 We have to trust that judges will be fair arbitrators in disputes in order for disputes to be settled in a civil, non-violent manner.\u00a0 If citizens do not trust judges, the rules of the jungle will prevail.<\/p>\n
Words or actions deemed as unfair or unwarranted attacks on the judiciary could be deemed contemptuous, and the court could sanction the one uttering the contempt.<\/p>\n
In The Bahamas this limits public criticism of the judiciary.\u00a0 It, however, should not prevent reasonable and intelligent examination of the actions and decisions of judges.<\/p>\n
Read the entire Nassau Guardian editorial by following the link to the original article below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Certain laws in The Bahamas were created to protect even corrupt and incompetent judges, but they should not prohibit reasonable and intelligent examination of the judiciary’s actions and decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[32,31,142,127],"class_list":["post-12390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-incompetence","tag-judges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}