The Attorney General’s Chambers today launched the Revised Laws of Guyana (December 31, 2022) and the Law Reports of Guyana (2008-2021) – an initiative that President Irfaan Ali said is of profound importance to the country, as it undergoes rapid transformation.
In his address at the launch at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), President Ali said while the country’s laws have evolved overtime to include amendments, the justice system is placed under strain when those changes are scattered across time, and buried in separate documents.
“Lawyers face difficulty in presenting arguments with certainty. Judges must work harder to arrive at confident decisions; citizens are left unclear about their rights and obligations. In such circumstances, the effective functioning of the legal system becomes compromised. This is why the process of consolidation and updating of our laws is essential,” the President said.
As he underscored the importance of consolidating the country’s laws, President Ali said he has observed that in a number of cases of national importance, some lawyers were quoting laws that were no longer in existence.
Speaking directly to the acting Chancellor of the Judiciary, Roxane George, the President said a Judge’s ability to differentiate between laws that are relevant and those that have become obsolete is what would allow justice to remain on a stable platform.
President Ali said too that the Law Reports of Guyana are also of significant importance to the Justice System.
“But law does not live in statutes alone. It lives in the decision of our courts. It is through judicial reasoning that laws are interpreted, applied and given life. When judicial decisions are not properly recorded, organized and published, the legal system loses an essential source of guidance, consistency becomes difficult to achieve, the development of legal principles becomes uneven, the reasoning that shapes our jurisprudence risk being lost. This is where the Guyana Law Reports assume their critical importance. Law Reports capture the thinking of our judges. Yes, it captures the thinking of our judges. They preserve the principles established in our courtrooms. They provide authoritative guidance for future cases and ensure that similar cases are treated in a similar manner. A judgment unrecorded is a lesson loss. A lesson loss is justice weakened,” the President reasoned.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall said the rule of law is the foundation upon which the edifice of civil society is constructed, noting that without it, there can be no economic progress, no social advancement, and no democratic governance.
He said as such, easy access to an updated and consolidated version of the laws is essential for justice to be accessed.
“This launch is the culmination of a project that will allow easy access to two primary sources of law: first, statute law (legislation) and its interpretation and application by the judiciary and, secondly, judge-made law. The Law Revision component of the project involves the consolidation as well as the revision of all current legislation. This is a process of combining the legislative provisions on a single topic into one coherent enactment. Repealed provisions are removed and replaced with the new ones and principal Acts are reorganized. This process also includes the changing of language of enactments so as to bring them in line with current usage, without making any change to the substance of the enactments, as well as, incorporating into principal Acts new or amended subsidiary legislation,” the Attorney General said.
The last time the Laws were revised was in 2014, however, corrections were made in 2022.
The Revised Laws of Guyana (December 31, 2022) Project was funded in part under the Improved Access to Justice in the Caribbean (IMPACT Justice) Project to the tune of US$350,000.
That amount only covered up to 2021.
An additional US$230,000 was funded by the Government of Guyana to include legislation that came into effect in 2022 and 325 pieces of subsidiary legislation.
Professor Emerita Velma Newton, former UWI Librarian and Dean Faculty of Law, and Regional Director of the IMPACT Justice Project served as the Editor of the new edition of the Guyana Law Reports.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login