Colleagues, distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen,
Good evening.
It’s a pleasure to see so many of our region’s sharpest legal minds gathered under one roof.
Welcome to The Bahamas, my friends—I hope we’ve made you feel at home.
And welcome to the 2025 Conference of Chief Justices and Heads of the Judiciaries of the Caribbean.
We are honoured to host this important regional forum.
The last time this conference came to our shores was in 2011, and it is indeed a pleasure to witness its return.
Transition as an Imperative
The theme for this year’s conference is a timely one: ‘Judiciaries in Transition’.
Transition is an appropriate term for the moment in which we find ourselves.
With AI and other emerging technologies reshaping the way we deliver justice, and with demographic shifts and climate change altering the very texture of our societies, transition is not simply a descriptor for Caribbean judiciaries, it is an imperative.
It cannot be business-as-usual if we endeavour to deliver fair, efficient, 21st century justice.
Our history is rich, and it is indeed pushing us along, but to keep up with the evolving legal landscapes in which we find ourselves, we must abandon the comforts of existing bureaucracy and embrace transition.
Expanding Judicial Capacity
Caribbean judiciaries in transition must weigh the costs and benefits of expanding capacity.
In some contexts, the benefits of a specialised court do not outweigh the costs.
But here in The Bahamas, we found that our system would benefit significantly from expanded capacity, both in terms of reduced case backlogs and improved public confidence in the judiciary.
And so, at the end of last year, we opened a new specialised court for family matters on the island of New Providence.
The family unit is, after all, the bedrock of our societies.
Our families take many forms, and they deserve a justice system that responds to their unique, manifold needs.
For the Bahamian families navigating disputes, custody arrangements, and other complex circumstances, there was a need for expanded court capacity.
We recognised that need.
Consideration, clarity, and closure is what our people deserve, and so we got to work.
We opened the Family Court Complex last December, as part of our broader mission to modernise the Bahamian judicial system.
Upgrades to the existing Court campus in downtown Nassau, including renovations to the Main Supreme Court buildings, are also underway, as is construction of a new Mediation Centre scheduled for completion by the end of this summer.
Additional resources are being mobilised to digitise court files throughout the judiciary of The Bahamas, with the introduction of electronic filing and integrated case management systems representing further improvements.
Criminal justice reform is also a significant facet of our modernisation agenda, in line with the Needham’s Point Declaration, adopted by Caribbean leaders at Bridgetown in October 2023.
Some of our reform efforts include:
- Amendments to increase the number of Supreme Court Judges;
- Amendments to our Bail Act, which also permit the Chief Justice to give directions to standardise bail conditions;
- Legislation to permit Judge Alone trials;
- Amendment of the Supreme Court Act to legislate criminal case management;
- New Criminal case management rules which provide for pretrial evidentiary hearings and the Defence Statement;
- And an Independent Commission for Investigation legislation.
Transitioning Judiciaries Justly
As we improve our capacity to deliver justice, we nevertheless recognise that, as an archipelago, the issue of access remains a challenge.
The Bahamas, of course, is not alone in this regard.
Twin island states like Trinidad and Tobago, as well as multi-island states like St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Turks and Caicos, face similar issues of distributing justice to dispersed populations.
Here, however, lies our greatest opportunity to transition toward greater judicial access and impact.
Digital solutions, such as remote hearings, represent one means of enhancing access to justice by eliminating the financial burden of travelling to urban centres—from the Family Islands to Nassau, for example.
Mobile justice services, travelling legal clinics, and community legal education programmes can empower residents in rural areas to better navigate the legal landscape.
At the Bahamas Department of Corrections, for instance, provisions for a virtual court have been made to advance progress on this very front.
For the eleven judiciaries represented here today, the innovations adopted to improve the administration of justice will, of course, be influenced by the particularities of local contexts.
No matter the tools adopted, we must ensure that, in getting ahead of the digital curve, we do not leave our elders and other vulnerable citizens behind.
Judiciaries in transition must stay tuned in to the needs of the most vulnerable to ensure efficiency does not come at the expense of equity.
Innovation, education, and access go hand in hand, my friends.
That is how justice systems transition justly.
A Just Future for Caribbean Judiciaries
Legal judgments do not exist in a vacuum.
They profoundly impact the lives of our people.
Without fairness, impartiality, and efficiency, our justice systems risk their perceived credibility, and it is public confidence in the judiciary, and the separation of powers, which underpins the stability of our democracies.
Recent surveys note a perception of low confidence in Caribbean judicial systems.
This perception cannot be disregarded—not least in a season of transition.
Public confidence is not a given; it must be nurtured and kept.
What an individual believes about their justice system—whether it is open to them, whether it will work for them, whether it can deliver a resolution swiftly and soundly for them—will determine if and how they engage with it.
The smallness of our societies, though typically framed as a challenge, is, in this case, an opportunity.
Make the right changes, and get the right message out about those changes, and public perception will improve.
At its core then, increasing public confidence begins with modernising our systems with the most vulnerable in mind.
It means fair compensation for public defenders.
It means safeguarding anonymity in sensitive cases.
It means swift justice.
And it means developing a watertight AI policy and embracing digital solutions that expand access to justice.
A just future for Caribbean judiciaries will depend on our capacity to transition justly, from the bottom up.
Right here, right now, we have an opportunity to define the trajectory of that transition.
Let’s do it with a clear moral vision of a justice system that is accessible and trusted by everyone.
My friends, may you have a fruitful and exciting conference.
And may the conversations you have in the days ahead shape our judicial systems for the better.
Thank you, and God bless you all.