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This chapter analyzes the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the creation of which was regarded as the culmination of the Caribbean’s long and protracted process toward independence from its former colonizers. Formally, the CCJ was instantaneously empowered to hear cases involving Caribbean Community law (Community law). The CCJ was also empowered to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in London—a last court of appeal for civil and criminal cases from the Caribbean and the most visible remnant of the British Empire’s former rule. The CCJ’s unique double jurisdiction—original over Community law and appellate over other civil and criminal matters—underscores the complex sociopolitical context and transformation of which it is a part. Ultimately, the CCJ’s growing authority has increasingly made the Court the institutional intersection for the convergence of these two different paths toward establishing the Caribbean as a legally integrated regional unity.

When the Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) became operative in August 1973, there were great expectations that at long last there were in place an institutional framework for economic integration in the Caribbean. This implied that the challenge of market fragmentation would be an issue of the past. But after the entry into force of the treaty, not much progress has been made in the economic integration of Caribbean markets. Issues abound as to whether the CARICOM, one of the world’s oldest still-functioning regional economic institutions, would ever be able to survive and, if it does, whether it would plug the Caribbean region into global commerce. This chapter holds that there are still weak areas in the framework of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that could not support market integration. It suggests that the CARICOM must play a greater role to strengthen this framework.

Chapter 9 offers a brief survey of recent developments in Brooklyn Carnival and the current status of its steelband and calypso/soca scenes. A description of Labor Day Carnival 2017, marking the 50th anniversary of the celebration, serves as a final coda. Carnival had survived in the face of a multitude of financial, political, and organizational obstacles for five decades, and New York’s Caribbean community was still jamming to soca and steelband music on Labor Day weekend. Over the previous decades, the press continued to portray the event as the city’s largest outdoor celebration, cementing Brooklyn Caribbean Carnival’s stature as an iconic New York cultural attraction. But what was once participatory ritual has increasingly taken on the aura of presentational spectacle. And while the Monday-morning pre-dawn J’Ouvert celebration, continued to operate, violence had marred the occasion in recent years. Nonetheless, Carnival music in Brooklyn has managed to survive, and in some corners flourished, despite a plethora of ongoing financial and logistical challenges.

Chapter 8 describes the emergence of Brooklyn’s J’Ouvert celebration in the 1990s. With its steelband and percussion-only policy, which strictly forbade deejays and amplified bands, J’Ouvert reflected a conscious attempt to preserve and revitalize older Carnival musical practices as forms of cultural heritage in response to their near disappearance from the more commercial Eastern Parkway parade. This chapter will flesh out the emergence of Brooklyn J’Ouvert, focusing on how a group of Trinidadian migrants revived a century-old celebration to create an event that appeared to some to actually be “more authentic” than what was going on back in Trinidad at the time. It is an extraordinary story of cultural revitalization within Brooklyn’s Caribbean community. Brooklyn J’Ouvert was derived from its parent Trinidad celebration, but like many diasporic expressions, it took on a life of its own.