[32]
In support of the claim that this Court is not entitled to exercise jurisdiction in these
proceedings on account of the finality clause in Article 177(4), counsel for Ms
David cited to us a number of authorities. We did not consider these cases helpful.
In none of them was there any suggestion that the courts under review lacked
jurisdiction, as is a fundamental question before us. In Dany Sylvie Marie v The
Electoral Supervisory Commission25 for example, in the face of a provision stating
that certain decisions of the Mauritius Supreme Court were not to be the subject of
appeal, the Privy Council declined jurisdiction to hear an appeal from a decision
made by that Supreme Court. To similar effect is Senanayake v Navaratne 26 where,
in the face of a finality clause, the Privy Council declined to entertain an appeal
from an election judge from what was then known as Ceylon. In the course of so
doing, however, the Privy Council made it quite clear that the election judge was
clothed with the jurisdiction to determine the purely procedural issue which came
before him. Moreover, the election judge in that case would not have been
trespassing on the exclusive jurisdiction of another tribunal if he had wrongly
assumed jurisdiction.
[33]
After the oral submissions were made in this case, without the leave of the Court,
counsel for Ms David tendered for the Court’s consideration the case of The
Superintendent of Her Majesty’s Foxhill Prison and Another v Viktor Kozeny27.
The Court considered the case. It was a case from The Bahamas where a judge had
granted a detainee’s application for a writ of habeas corpus and set aside the
detainee’s committal. They, at whose instance the man was detained (the detainers),
appealed that decision to the Court of Appeal which dismissed the appeal. The
detainers then applied to appeal further to the Privy Council. The question for
decision was whether the Privy Council possessed jurisdiction to hear an appeal
from the Court of Appeal of The Bahamas against an order made in habeas corpus
proceedings. The Privy Council judgment traversed at some length ‘the ancient and
universally recognized constitutional right’ that appeals were never entertained
25
26
27
[2011] UKPC 45, [2012] 4 LRC 465.
[1954] AC 640.
[2012] UKPC 10, (2012) 81 WIR 12.