Visiting Caribbean judges highlighted the importance of diversity and representation in the courts as they prepared for a meeting of judicial officers in Bermuda.

Speaking with The Royal Gazette this week, Justice Adrian Saunders, the President of the Caribbean Court of Justice, said there had been a move throughout the region to diversify judiciaries in the areas of race, gender and disability.

Mr Justice Saunders, who came to Bermuda for this week’s meeting of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers, said that diversity in the judiciary was an asset.

“Judging is a discipline that requires a breadth of vision,” he said.

“It requires different perspectives in order to fully interrogate a legal issue and the greater the experience of the persons who are looking at the legal issue, the better you are able to fashion the best possible solution.

“Therefore, if a judiciary is very closed, if it doesn’t admit persons who can bring a different perspective, then the solutions that the judiciary will propose for solving problems will be more limited than if there are perspectives that come from different sources.”

Puisne Judge Shade Subair Williams said that Bermuda had a long history of English judges presiding over cases in the Court of Appeal, but the Bermudian and Caribbean element on the bench had grown.

“We are moving away from the concept that our highest court has to consist of English members of the judiciary simply because we are a British colony.

“Our apex court being the Privy Council has always engaged this idea, this narrow idea, that we need to have members of the English judiciary dominating or monopolising the higher courts and that is no longer the case.”

She said that while it was important to have local representation, it was also important in small jurisdictions to have overseas judges to prevent a potential appearance of unfairness.

Justice Peter Jamadar, the chairman of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers, added that female representation on the bench was also important.

“The gender perspective on life, on living and on law is an important voice and it’s a perspective without which much has been missed in the past and much can be missed in how we do justice and how we develop our jurisprudence,” he said.

Mrs Justice Subair Williams noted that she was the only female judge in Bermuda’s commercial division and said the CAJO had helped her to meet colleagues in the Caribbean who may have faced similar circumstances.

“To go to another region where there were many judges who looked like me and who come from a similar demographic background that I came from was just refreshing from a mental wellness perspective,” she said.

Mr Justice Saunders said the judiciary needed to create the right environment to foster diversity in all areas.

He noted that several jurisdictions have recently published policies aimed at breaking down barriers experienced by people with disabilities in their judicial systems.

Mr Justice Jamadar said the Caribbean Court of Justice now delivers judgments with sign language.

He added: “It is a shift in approach to recognise that there is a community there who we have never thought of before and trying to say they are important.”

Mrs Justice Subair Williams noted: “We are not there yet, but we will now want to follow suit in an area like that.

“It is a question of resources, it is a question of collaboration, but that’s a live example of how the CAJO relationship influences what you can potentially find in Bermuda.”