The authors of this work are Yemisi Dina, the Chief Law Librarian of the Osgoode Hall Law School Library, York University in Toronto, and Past President of CALL (the Canadian Association of Law Libraries) and Yasmin Morais, who has recently taken up the role of Foreign, Comparative & International Collection Development Librarian at Harvard Law School, having previously worked as Head of Collection Services at the David A Clarke School of Law, University of the District of Columbia.
In a Staff News article for the David A Clarke School of Law in January 2024, Yasmin Morais says that her motivation in writing this book developed when she identified a significant resource gap for Caribbean legal research. She states that “I was very surprised to see that there were no comprehensive books or anything written in one place that talked about researching the laws of the Caribbean.” She goes on to say: “The main thing I want people to realise is that when they think of the Caribbean, it is not one monolithic region. The countries we focused on are diverse with different priorities, with a shared history of being former British colonies.”
The book focuses on the 20 jurisdictions of the English-speaking Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The authors set out not only to provide guidance on Caribbean sources of law, but also to give insight into the legal processes prevalent in the region, and how Caribbean law has evolved in the jurisdictions they cover.
It sets the scene with an overview of Caribbean legal education, from the establishment of the University of the West Indies in the 1940s to the development of a formal legal education system in the 1970s. The authors highlight that, while access to legal education has broadened, only three institutions in the region provide the final phase of training for the legal education certificate, leading to significant competition for study places at this level.
The opening chapter also summarises the findings of the 1996 Barnett Report on Legal Education, which addressed a number of key issues in legal education. The authors point out that, although there has been significant progress in legal training, a number of challenges remain.
The second chapter gives a very useful overview of the legal research process which, of course, applies beyond the Caribbean region. The authors emphasise that, when researching primary resources, it is vital to understand whether the country in question is an independent one or an Overseas Territory. Many of the English-speaking countries covered in this book have historical links to the UK as former British colonies. Comprehensive advice is provided on secondary sources as starting points for legal research queries. The chapter concludes with a helpful summary of the geography, history and politics of the English-speaking Caribbean states.
Chapters 3 to 8 provide excellent guidance on key resources for researching Caribbean constitutions, legislation, municipal law, legislative history, case law and court rules.
Chapter 9 focuses on secondary sources, picking out key texts, listed according to practice area. In Chapter 10, the authors go on to provide an overview of treaty research, discussing the legal resources of regional and international organisations.
There then follows a very valuable chapter on foreign, comparative and international law research. As the authors point out, “it is important to understand the legal systems of different jurisdictions, as well as knowing how to locate and find the laws”. This chapter provides useful and detailed definitions, as well as a wide range of important texts, and key professional organisations.
The final chapter outlines a number of emerging, and highly topical, legal topics, including climate change, cryptocurrencies and space law.
This book will be an extremely useful resource for researchers and students, not only of English-speaking Caribbean jurisdictions, but of foreign, comparative and international law.
