The government of Trinidad and Tobago is actively opposing the appeal.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar noted that the outcome could influence other historical "savings clauses" enacted during colonial rule to preserve British laws post-independence.
"This ruling is going to be a very profound decision, not just impacting on sodomy laws but that whole issue of the saving clause," Persad-Bissessar told the Guardian.
"We have a lot of colonial laws that were saved, so this will give us guidance as to which ones we keep, which ones we don't keep."
Darrell Allahar, a minister in the office of the prime minister and a member of the legal team, described the Privy Council hearing as a beneficial exercise for obtaining clarity on the constitutional mechanism.
"We want to get the court's view because the issue is more than the sodomy laws, the issue has to do with what is called the savings clause, which is a feature of all of our constitutions in the English-speaking Caribbean," he said.
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Allahar added that the clauses were created "to save existing laws at independence so we don't have a wholesale gutting of those laws in light of the human rights provisions."
Activist and International Perspectives
The 61-year-old activist Jason Jones expressed frustration that the legal dispute had to reach a British appellate court instead of being resolved locally.
"At any time over the last decade of my legal challenge, the state and indeed parliament could have put a stop to this and just removed these heinous laws themselves," he said.
