West Indian Court of Appeal
United Kingdom legislation

The West Indian Court of Appeal (WICA) was a court which served as the appellate court for the British colonies of British Guiana, Barbados, the Leeward and Windward Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago from 1919 until the creation of the Federal Supreme Court of the West Indies Federation in 1958.
History
The West Indian Court of Appeal Bill got its second reading in July 1919, having been moved by the Undersecretary of State Lt. Col. Amery. The Bill proposed that the Chief Justice of Trinidad would be the president of the court. Governments could choose whether their appeals went to the West Indian Court of Appeal before the Privy Council. The bill was read a third time in August 1919.
The court was created by the West Indian Court of Appeal Act 1919 (9 & 10 Geo. 5. c.
“West Indian Court of Appeal” enters the record as united Kingdom legislation. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what West, Indian and Court can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60794677. VIAF identifies the subject as 151864668. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1919 and 1958.
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This entry incorporates text from “West Indian Court of Appeal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.