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Fundamentals of Caribbean Constitutional Law
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Although there have been a number of seminal publications on Caribbean constitutional law, this discipline lacked a single book that comprehensively articulated, discussed, and clarified the fundamental principles of constitutional law in the Anglophone Caribbean, and, at the same time, considered the plethora of constitutional controversies facing the region. Fundamentals aims to do this, and to be accessible to both first-time learners and seasoned practitioners and scholars.
It has been taken for granted that Caribbean constitutions provide for democratic institutions, characterised by separation of powers, respect for the rule of law, strong protection of judicial independence, and guaranteed fundamental rights and freedoms. Still, what these principles mean and their effect, are often very imprecise; none more so than the expansive doctrine of separation of powers that, over time, has been subject to ‘a growing list of judicial and academic provisos’. Fundamentals clarifies the scope and meaning of the foundational principles in Caribbean constitutional law, and works through contradictory and inconsistent approaches to constitutional interpretation.
To what has been mostly seen as a post-independence discipline, the book traces longer roots of Caribbean constitutionalism, focussing on the forms of governing people and property that developed between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, and the constitutional tragedies they engendered. Both are indispensable to understanding Caribbean constitutional law today. No other scholarship has examined as closely the historical roots of modern constitutionalism in the Caribbean. The authors conclude that these roots have been more attentive to ‘seeking order’ than ‘realising justice’ and ‘human equality’.
Fundamentals not only reflects on the past, but considers the contemporary constitutional issues of the twenty-first century. This includes questions such as securing judicial independence in small developing countries, and the tension between the supremacy of national constitutions and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for which the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas is the supreme instrument. In the final chapter, the book explores the ubiquitous processes of constitutional reform in the region since 2000 that has led to new constitutions in four overseas territories, but only modest changes in the independent Caribbean states. The book also examines the impact of globalisation and internationalisation on these processes of constitutional reform in the Caribbean.
Fundamentals of Caribbean Constitutional Law provides an authoritative source of what is the law in an area of great public importance and one that is instrumental to governance. The book is not only likely to become a part of the curriculum wherever Caribbean constitutional law is taught, but it is also academic scholarship that is expected to contribute to the development of legal argumentation and judicial decision- making in the Caribbean. Further, Fundamentals is an important global scholarly resource, especially in the burgeoning field of comparative constitutional law scholarship which has, up until now, given relatively little attention to the constitutional systems in the Caribbean.
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