Caribbean court names next president

A national of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Justice Adrian Saunders has been named as the next president of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

He will replace Sir Dennis Byron when he steps down later this year.

Byron, a national of St. Kitts and Nevis, was appointed as the CCJ’s second president on Sept. 1, 2011.

The tenure of the CCJ president is for a non-renewable term of seven years.

The announcement of Saunders as the next CCJ president was made on the CCJ’s official Twitter account last week.

“The CCJ president, Sir Dennis Byron, announced that the next president of the Court will be Mr. Justice Saunders, who is already a judge at the CCJ,” the tweet said.

Saunders, a former acting chief justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, was sworn in as a CCJ judge on April 16, 2005.

Justice Saunders was appointed in 1996 as Judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) and in 2003 he was confirmed as a Justice of Appeal of the ECSC.

One year later he was appointed to act as chief justice of that court.

Justice Saunders holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill) Barbados in 1975 and Legal Education Certificate of the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and Tobago in 1977, the CCJ’s website stated.

He was called to the bar of the St Vincent and the Grenadines in the same year.