CONFERENCE: Constitutional Reform and the Commonwealth Caribbean

Constitutional Reform and the Commonwealth Caribbean: 

Democratic Legitimacy and Constituent Power.

19 of April 2013- The Court Room, Senate House, London WC1E 7HU

Speakers confirmed:

Professor Simeon McIntosh, formerly Dean of Law Faculty at the University of the West Indies. Professor McIntosh has written extensively on the topic of constitutional reform in the Commonwealth Caribbean - Caribbean Constitutional Reform: Rethinking the West Indian Polity,  ‪(Caribbean Law Publishing Company, 2002) - and is currently responsible for redrafting the Constitution of Grenada. As part of this process Professor McIntosh has consulted extensively with civil society organisations in Grenada and with members of the Grenadian diaspora in the United States. His paper is entitled ‘Constitution Founding in the Commonwealth Caribbean: Re-drafting the Grenada Constitution.’

 Dr Joel Colon-Rios, Victoria University of Wellington Law School (by videolink). Dr Joel Colon-Rios is the author of Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic Legitimacy and the Question of Constituent Power (Routledge: 2012) in which he engages with Anglo-American constitutional theory as well as examining the theory and practise of constituent power in different constitutional regimes (including Latin American countries) where constituent power has become an important part of the left’s legal and political discourse. His paper is entitled ‘Constituent Power and Constitutional Reform: A Latin American Perspective’.

Susan Dickson, Legal Advisor to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). In her role as Legal Advisor to the FCO Susan Dickson has been actively involved in the constitutional reform of a number of the British Overseas Territories in the last few years, including the Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. She is the co-author of British Overseas Territories and the Law (Hart, 2011). She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Small Jurisdictions Service of the School of Law at Oxford Brookes University. Her paper is provisionally entitled Constitutional Reform and Constituent Power in the British Overseas Territories.’

Dr Derek O’Brien, Principal Lecturer Oxford Brookes University. Dr O’Brien has written numerous journal articles on Commonwealth Caribbean constitutionalism and is currently completing a monograph on the Constitutional Law Systems of the Commonwealth Caribbean for Hart Publishing. His paper is entitled ‘The Challenges of Post-Independence Constitutional Reform in the Commonwealth Caribbean.’

Se-shauna Wheatle is a Jamaican Rhodes scholar and Lecturer in Law at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She is the co-author with Derek O’Brien of a paper on the new Jamaican Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (Public Law, forthcoming). Her paper is entitled, ‘Re-drafting the Jamaican Constitution: The Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.’

Convenor: Dr Derek O’Brien, Principal Lecturer Oxford Brookes University mailto: do’brien@brookes.ac.uk