Law, Language, and a Nonsovereign Caribbean

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), a tribunal serving twelve independent primarily Anglophone Caribbean states, uses a variety of linguistic techniques in its pursuit of a regional future. Created upon a complicated (post)colonial landscape and charged with resolving the nonsovereignty of its member states, which, for the most part, continue to utilize the United Kingdom's Privy Council for their final court of appeal, the CCJ does not view sovereignty as a solution. Instead, as I demonstrate through several examples of the Court's use of, talk about, and abstention from language, the CCJ's judges and employees seek to constitute a yet‐to‐be‐fully‐defined nonsovereign region that carves out a Caribbean people, pointedly rejects ongoing British legacies and logics, refuses to adopt the legal practices associated with sovereignty, and strives to remain untethered to either nation‐state or suprastate. [law, language, sovereignty, region, Caribbean]