By the standards of Jamaica's judicial system, we suppose the Dabdoub/Vaz election case has been concluded at breakneck speed if, indeed, it has.

Where it often requires several years for even simple cases to be heard and concluded, it took a mere 17 months between the general election of 2007 and last week's decision by the Court of Appeal to uphold Chief Justice Zaila McCalla's of last April that Daryl Vaz was ineligible at the time to contest the poll and that a by-election should be held in the West Portland constituency.

Chief Justice McCalla, having heard complex legal arguments in the case, delivered her written judgment in less than three months. The Court of Appeal justices were, in the context of their own deliberations, similarly swift in rendering a ruling.

Constitutionally pivotal

Our surprise and concern, however, is that in a case that is so legally and constitutionally pivotal, the justices chose to deliver a verbal judgment, with their written arguments to follow afterwards. No specific date was set for its delivery.

We believe that this was an error of judgment on the part of Justices Panton, Smith and Harrison. There was nothing compelling, in so far as we can discern, for them to have rendered their ruling without the accompaniment of the written arguments at this time.

What, instead, they are likely to have done is to further fuel unfounded speculation about the integrity and capacity of the court and claims that the justices are playing 'catch-up'.

It is precisely that unwarranted perception that Justice Panton, the president, sought to dispel when, in delivering the judgment, he spoke of people who had given the impression that they knew its contents beforehand.

"Anyone who spoke to the content of our judgment was merely guessing," he insisted. That remark, we sense, is code for: This is an independent court, not subject to political direction.

And that is the reason that a fully argued and written judgment should have been delivered at the time of the court's declaration. For this is no ordinary case. It will impact on the legitimacy of at least four other parliamentarians of the governing Jamaica Labour Party. Mr Vaz, on the basis of the vote, won his seat, but was challenged by Mr Dabdoub on the grounds that as an American citizen, Mr Vaz was ineligible to serve in the Jamaican Parliament. Justice McCalla agreed, but instead of awarding the election to Mr Dabdoub, as he argued ought to have been done, ruled that there should be a by-election. Mr Dabdoub appealed that part of the judge's ruling, Mr Vaz, the whole thing.

Significantly, almost immediately after the Court of Appeal's ruling, Prime Minister Golding, with a razor-thin margin in Parliament, announced the by-election. Yet, we suspect that this case will not rest at the Court Appeal, where election petitions usually end, but instead will find new life, even if circuitously, at the Privy Council as a constitutional matter.

That is why we would have preferred the appeal justices' arguments to have been immediately subject to rigorous analysis rather than speculative assumptions. Unless they have adduced radical new thinking to reach the same place as Justice McCalla, it is hard to complain against those who feel that the appeal justices have been tardy on that score.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.