BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders have accepted the recommendation of the Regional Judicial Legal Services Commission (RJLSC) to appoint the Jamaican-born jurist, Justice Winston Anderson, as the new president of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

The Trinidad-based CCJ was established on February 14, 2001 to replace the London-based Privy Council as the region’s highest court, and while most of the regional countries are members of its original jurisdiction that also serves as an international tribunal interpreting the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas only Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana and St Lucia are members of its Appellate Jurisdiction.

Anderson becomes the fourth president of the CCJ, replacing the St Vincent and the Grenadines jurist, Justice Adrian Saunders, who retires later this year.

“We congratulate him on the agreement of heads to his appointment to the highest position of the Regional Treaty Interpretation Body,” Barbados Prime Minister and Caricom chair, Mia Mottley said.

Anderson, 65, is a graduate and former lecturer of the University of the West Indies (UWI) as well as Cambridge University, where in 1988 he received a doctorate in philosophy majoring in International and Environmental Law.

Also in 1988, he completed a course of training at the Inns of Court School of Law in London and was called to the Bar of England and Wales.
In 1996 he was appointed senior lecturer, whilst on fellowship leave from the UWI, at the University of Western Australia; and in 1999 became a UWI senior lecturer in law.

Justice Anderson was appointed General Counsel of the Caribbean Community on secondment from UWI from 2003 to 2006, and in 2006, UWI Professor of Law.

Anderson returned to the Faculty of Law in 2006 and was called to the Bar of Jamaica. He was appointed executive director of the Caribbean Law Institute Centre, in 2007, a position he held until 2010.

On 15 June 2010, Anderson was sworn in as Judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice.

He is the author of numerous publications including The Law of the Sea in the Caribbean, Caribbean Private International Law and The Law of Caribbean Marine Pollution.

Mottley told reporters at the end of the three-day CARICOM summit that the leaders “also agreed to commission the work for the creation of a treaty to be able to have the University of the West Indies effectively repatriated and not to be the output of a royal charter which is no longer appropriate in this modern age.

“It may seem to be something that is very out of the way and unusual for persons, but we need to be able to perfect the opportunity for our institutions to function,” she added.