BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – The College of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus has stoutly defended its legislation program after Chief Justice Sir Patterson Cheltenham questioned the standard of this system and the attorneys it was producing.
In response to the chief justice saying the LLB program was not rigorous sufficient and was “populated with quite a lot of tremendous comfortable choices to get folks over the bar,” the college insisted that not one of the programs supplied to legislation college students could possibly be thought of “comfortable.”
“The College of Legislation at Cave Hill, the area’s longest-serving, boasts a wealthy custom of excellence. It has a stable custom of authorized analysis and has essentially the most intensive repository of authorized sources within the area,” it added.
Talking in courtroom on Friday as he heard arguments within the Authorities’s attraction towards a choose’s ruling that an modification to the nation’s Bail Act was unconstitutional, Sir Patterson mentioned he was “troubled” with the course choices, stating that many potential attorneys have been electing to take “comfortable” programs and keep away from the more durable ones that will make them more practical on the Bar.
He mentioned this was troubling “for the nation’s future improvement.”
“The Bar for entry doesn’t exist. You stroll in. It’s a place that suffers from mental attrition.
“What I’ll let you know is that the LLB program is populated with quite a lot of tremendous comfortable choices to get folks over the bar, to say they’ve an LLB,” mentioned Sir Patterson, stepping down from the place of chief justice in Could. “This system lacks analytical rigor, which individuals like myself needed to undergo to realize this.”
He additionally referred to as on the Hugh Wooding Legislation College in Trinidad and Tobago to “audit” the content material of the LLBs coming in and ship again candidates with “comfortable choices” to do different programs.
Nevertheless, in a press release on Saturday, the UWI rejected the suggestion of a diminished high quality of its current graduates resulting from “comfortable possibility” programs.
It mentioned that within the earliest days of the college’s 54-year existence, college students studying for a legislation diploma on the UWI Cave Hill have been supplied what, by as we speak’s requirements of world authorized schooling, was a restricted curriculum with slender course choices. Scholar choices are a lot broader as we speak, the college famous.
“Whereas a core curriculum of obligatory or necessary programs stays in place for two-thirds of their three years of examine, college students’ selections these days embrace a variety of contemporary legislation subjects befitting examine by a Twenty first-century legislation graduate. These embrace, however should not restricted to, Different Dispute Decision, Environmental Legislation, Mental Property Legislation, Worldwide Legislation, World Well being Legislation, Competitors Legislation and Coverage, Public Legislation, Caribbean Integration Legislation, and Worldwide Business Arbitration.
“It’s our thought of opinion that these are rigorous areas of examine that are consistent with fashionable authorized schooling. None may be thought of a comfortable possibility, and none of those choices have been out there to graduates who entered and exited legislation college a long time in the past.”
The chief justice expressed concern that important topics, just like the Legislation of Belief, have been being “marginalized.”
“Everybody needed to do Belief, or no less than elected to do Belief, as a result of it was a foundational course. We handed the take a look at due to the rigorous testing that we got,” he mentioned of his time at college.
In response, the UWI mentioned: “In regards to the now elective Legislation of Belief course, work has began on rebranding and renaming this for necessary taking up account of its significance to authorized apply.”
The college assured that because it continues its mandate to organize the authorized occupation for a variety of roles throughout the area and past, it has in place a rigorous analysis technique of its educational choices, noting that high quality assurance in larger schooling is a regulated course of that follows worldwide requirements.
The UWI Cave Hill’s diploma packages are assured by means of a devoted High quality Assurance Unit, which coordinates common High quality Assurance Critiques. Such critiques are externally led however embrace a senior employer’s consultant. On the final High quality Assurance Evaluation of the LLB, Mr. Patterson Cheltenham QC (now Chief Justice Sir Patterson Cheltenham) was the consultant from the authorized occupation.
“Thus far, there have been 4 high quality evaluation critiques of the College of Legislation, the final of which befell in 2015 with the three-member assessment staff comprising Professor William Flanagan, (then) Dean, College of Legislation, Queens’s College, Canada; Professor Gilbert Kodilinye, Professor of Property Legislation, UWI, Mona; and the present Chief Justice who was, on the time, a practising lawyer,” it mentioned, including {that a} fifth assessment course of is ready to get underway subsequent month.
The UWI pledged to take the matter of high quality assurance of its educational choices and normal pedagogical practices with the utmost seriousness.
“On this regard, it welcomes enter from varied stakeholders beneath applicable circumstances, together with skilled our bodies which profit from its academic output,” it added.
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