Kittitian-born legal luminary, sixty-seven-year-old Sir Dennis Byron is the new president of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), according to a press release today from the Office of the St Kitts Prime Minister.
Sir Dennis, who was Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal, replaces Michael de la Bastide, who is due to retire on August 18.
The release said his appointment was made three weeks ago at the CARICOM Heads of Government Inter-Sessional Meeting in Grenada, but the announcement was only made yesterday in a press release issued by the Public Education and Communications Unit of the CCJ.
Sir Dennis is currently president of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The actual date of his assumption of office at the CCJ will be announced in due course, the release from the PM’s office said.
He won the Leeward Islands Scholarship in 1960 and went to read law at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from where he graduated with an MA and LLB. After 16 years of private practice in the Eastern Caribbean, he went on to serve as High Court judge, Justice of Appeal and then Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, the release said.
Sir Dennis was the trial judge in the Maurice Bishop murder trial in Grenada – the longest criminal trial in the Caribbean.
The release added that while he was Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean, Sir Dennis led the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court Judicial Law Reform Programme, which included the establishment of a Code of Ethics for Judges and the implementation of new Civil Procedure Rules.
In 2000 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and was appointed a member of Her Majesty’s Privy Council in 2004.
