Anthony Lucky among 4 Caribbean jurists honoured

FOR his judgments and articles on the marine environment, Justice Anthony Lucky was among four Caribbean jurists inducted on Monday among the Caribbean Court of Justice's Eminent Caribbean International Law Jurists.

The former Court of Appeal judge is a San Fernandian who sits as a judge of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. The other inductees were former Commonwealth secretary general Sir Shridath Ramphal and Justices Patrick Robinson and Duke Pollard.

The gala function at the Hyatt Regency Hotel saw distinguished jurists from the Caribbean acknowledging the work of the other inductees: Ramphal for Commonwealth development; the Jamaican-born Robinson, a member of the International Court of Justice, for service to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and Pollard, a CCJ judge from Guyana, for dedicated service to international commercial law in the Caribbean.

Lucky has lectured and published articles in international journals on rising sea levels, protection of the marine environment and climate change.

He has delivered dissenting judgments, including a recent one which dealt with the United Nations drawing a new maritime border in the Bay of Bengal, which awarded more than three-quarters of a disputed area, to Bangladesh, opening more energy exploration in the sea.

Lucky served as president of the tribunal's chamber for Marine Environmental Disputes and president of the tribunal's Chamber for Fisheries disputes.

In an article hailed as a classic thesis on the environment, Lucky pondered on the environment as a living organism, which perhaps could assert the constitutional right to life. He is currently exploring the argument on how the environment can defend that right and avoid being trampled upon at the whims and fancies of those responsibie for protecting the environment.

Caribbean Court of Appeal judge Peter Jamadar inducted the jurists.