EDITORIAL
Despite popular perception that the field is overcrowded, this has not served to reduce the number of those aspiring to enter the legal profession. Of course, with the establishment of a regional system of legal education and professional training, the contemporary pursuit of this goal has become relatively freer of the monetary and other constraints that would have had to be overcome by those in earlier years who were identically inclined.
In 1971, the Contracting Parties to an Agreement Establishing the Council of Legal Education, “sharing a common determination to establish without delay a scheme for legal education and training that is suited to the needs of the Caribbean” and “convinced that such a scheme of education and training can best be achieved by first, a University course of academic training in a Faculty of Law designed to give not only a background of general legal principles and techniques but an appreciation of relevant social science subjects…; and, second, a period of further institutional training directed
towards the study of legal subjects, having a practical content and emphasis, and the acquisition of the skills and techniques required for the practice of law”, established a system of legal education and training for the region.
To this end, the Treaty stipulated in Article 3 – “Every person who holds a University of the West Indies LL.B. degree shall be eligible for admission to the Law Schools and every person who holds a degree of a University or Institution which is recognised by the Council as being equivalent to the University of the West Indies LL.B. degree shall, subject to the availability of places and to such conditions (if any) as the Council may require, be eligible for admission to the Law Schools.”
Notably, the situation has changed since in ways that would not have been contemplated by the Agreement. Each campus of UWI now offers an LL.B degree. The University of Guyana is now entitled to have a number of its students admitted to the Law Schools and so too the University of the Bahamas that has, in addition, been allowed to open another Law School and to offer a qualifying LL.B at the University of the Bahamas. Further, the recognition of equivalency is now effected by the requirement for holders of other LL.B degrees to write an entrance examination for admission into one of the law schools.
This preferment of those holding the UWI LLB as provided was unsuccessfully challenged recently in the original jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice, an outcome owed principally to the fact that the applicant proposed to sue the wrong defendants. He could not sue the Council of Legal Education because the Council, not being an organ of the Caribbean Community, was not amenable to the original Jurisdiction of the Court. Nor could the proposed claim proceed against the two Councils, COHSOD and COTED, because they have no juridical personality; or against the Community itself since it does not direct or control the Council and it does not manage or administer the Agreement.
To our mind, these arguments are entirely persuasive and the CCJ did leave it up to the applicant to decide whether and how to seek the redress he claims.
Clearly, any such relief must entail a change to Article 3 of the 1971 Agreement by the Contracting Parties thereto, but we opine that in the contemporary context, this appears to provide an anti-competitive entry barrier to regional consumers of legal education and thus should require justification in the public or consumer interest. In this regard, political advocacy on the basis that the Article is anti-competitive and thus contrary to the ideals of the Community seems far more probable of success.