Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Commonwealth Caribbean by S.Y. Mohammed

• Author: R.W. James
• Position: Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Papua New Guinea, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies, Barbados
• Pages: 236-243

Fundamental Rights and Freedoms

of the Commonwealth Caribbean

by S.Y. Mohammed

[New Guyana Co. Ltd., 1993]

xviii, 207 pp.

Fundamental Rights in Commonwealth

Caribbean Constitutions

by Margaret DeMerieux

[Faculty of Law Library,

University of the West Indies, 1992]

xxxiii, 507 pp.

These two recent publications are studies of the guarantees on

fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the several

Commonwealth Caribbean Constitutions. The former is authored by a

judge of the High Court of Guyana (who has since retired), and the

latter, by an academic who has taught for more than two decades in the

Law Faculty, Cave Hill Campus, University of the West Indies.

To a large extent they cover the same field with both authors

emphasizing the common elements of

the

various bills of rights, which

are drawn from a common source and prominently set out in all the

independence Constitutions of Commonwealth Caribbean states. In

many cases the guarantees are in identical language. However, any

assumption that similar provisions in the area of fundamental rights and

freedoms would lead to identical application and/or interpretation by

the courts is a doubtful proposition and unmindful of the political and

socio-economic divergences in the region.

It is to be expected, though, that pioneering works which discuss

material from a dozen jurisdictions would concentrate on unity rather

than diversity. But divergences there are in a region which adopted

different social, economic and political paths to development, and

experienced at least one revolution. What unity is achieved in the

interpretation and application of the Caribbean bills of rights must be

credited not to the commonality of the provisions, but to the activities

of

the

Privy Council as the final appellate court of all the jurisdictions,

except Guyana (since 1970) and Grenada (1979 to 1991).