There is high level support for a call by the secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum to establish a regional court.
Fiji's chief justice, Daniel Fatiaki, says the region suffers from a lack of resources and insufficient judicial staff, so the call by Greg Urwin is timely.
Mr Fatiaki says the court, although regional, would apply national laws so this would overcome issues of sovereignty and control of a country's justice system.
But, he says Mr Urwin's proposal for a specialist regional court dealing with constitutional and land matters could run into issues.
"The court would be more problematic if it tried to deal with land matters because land tenure in the islands are really quite disparate. They are very, very different. Our land tenure systems are really quite different so it would be difficult to find a uniformity to it."
Mr Fatiaki says, however, there are common points constitutionally so a regional court on those issues could work.
