Port-of-Spain – Sir Charles Michael Dennis Byron will head the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). He was appointed to succeed current president Michael de la Bastide, who is due to retire on August 18.
This recommendation, by the Regional and Judicial Legal Services Commission, was accepted at the recent CARICOM Heads of Government meeting in St George’s, Grenada.
Byron is currently president of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The actual date of his assumption of office at the CCJ is still to be announced.
A native of St Kitts and Nevis, Sir Dennis won the Leeward Islands Scholarship in 1960 and went on to read law at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. After 16 years of private practice in the Eastern Caribbean, he served as high court judge, Justice of Appeal and then Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court.
While there, he led the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court judicial reform programme.
He was appointed president of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute in 2000 – the year he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He was appointed a member of Her Majesty’s Privy Council in 2004.
