Tonya Bastian Galanis

Principal
Eugene Dupuch Law School

Mrs. Galanis is an Attorney-at-Law and serves on several Committees of the Council of Legal Education. She serves on the Ethics Committee of The Bahamas Bar Association, the Law Faculty Board of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus and the Law Faculty Advisory Board of the University of The Bahamas.

Mrs. Galanis is an active member of several civic and community organizations. She is the Registrar of the Anglican Diocese of The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands and is a former Chairman of the Securities Commission of The Bahamas.

Dr. Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean

Assistant Professor
University of The Bahamas

Dr. Niambi Hall-Campbell Dean manifests her purpose as an Afrocentric, community psychologist who harnesses the revolutionary power of love to affect positive social change.

A graduate of Florida A&M and North Carolina State University, she is the incoming chair of the Psychology Department at the University of The Bahamas. Her work focuses on the use of culture as a tool for the empowerment of those within the African Diaspora.

The most recent example of which was the King of The Conch Fest, a Bahamian competition with the mission to preserve conch and culture that she co-founded with her husband Stephen Dean. Her professional appointments are both local and international and have included The National Reparations Committee of The Bahamas and the International Relations Chair of the Association of Black Psychologists.

While her academic honors include Psi Chi and Alpha Kappa Mu Honors Society she remains connected to her community as a regular contributor on Guardian Radio, a Coordinator of The Indaba Project; a grassroots, community-based, youth organization, a member #WEGATCHU, the Hurricane Dorian psycho-social relief group out of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas and The US Embassy’s Academy of Women Entrepreneurs.

Mr. Khalil D. Parker

President
Bahamas Bar Association

Kahlil D. Parker studied law at the University of Bristol, UK, and received his Bachelor of Laws Degree in 2004 from the University of Bristol. Mr. Parker completed his Bar Vocational Course at BPP Professional Education in London, UK, and he was called to The Bahamas Bar and the Bar of England & Wales in 2005.

Mr. Parker undertook further studies and obtained a Master of Laws Degree in Commercial Law in 2006 from the University of Bristol, he returned to The Bahamas where he practices law as a Partner in the Firm of Cedric L. Parker & Co. Mr. Parker’s areas of practice include Civil and Commercial Litigation, Banking & Financial Services and Corporate Governance, Industrial Relations and Employment Law, Public Law and Judicial Review.

Mr. Parker is the President of The Bahamas Bar Association (2017-2019) and (2019-2021), he is a Rotarian of the Rotary Club of East Nassau and is a Trustee of The Queen’s College Foundation. Mr. Parker also served as a Part-Time Lecturer at the University of The Bahamas in Legal Research and Legal Writing.

Ms. Tracy Robinson

Sr. Lecturer & Deputy Dean (Graduate Studies and Research)

Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica, W.I

Tracy Robinson is a senior lecturer and Deputy Dean (Graduate Studies and Research) at the Faculty of Law, the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, Jamaica. She is a co-founder and co-coordinator of the Faculty of Law, The UWI, Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP), which works to promote human rights and social justice in the Caribbean through strategic litigation, legal education, and research.

Her research and publications focus on Caribbean constitutions, family law and gender, sexuality and the law. Her publications include the textbook, Fundamentals of Caribbean Constitutional Law (2015), cowritten with Arif Bulkan and Adrian Saunders. She has written several articles on gender, citizenship and the Caribbean constitutions, including ‘The Properties of Citizens: A Caribbean Grammar of Conjugal Categories’ (2013) published in Dubois Review; ‘Gender, Nation and the Common Law Constitution’ (2008) published in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies; ‘Gender, Feminism and Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean’ published in (Gender in the 21st Century: Caribbean Perspectives, Visions and Possibilities (2004); and ‘Fictions of Citizenship: Bodies without Sex and the Effacement of Gender in Law’ (1999) published in Small Axe.

Robinson was a member of the seven-person Inter-American Commission (IACHR) between 2012 and 2015 and served as its President between 2014 and 2015. At the IACHR, she was the Inaugural Rapporteur of the Rights of LGBTI Persons and the Rapporteur on the Rights of Women. During her tenure at the IACHR she served as the country rapporteur for the Bahamas and conducted an academic visit to the Bahamas in 2015.

She also served as a member of the Technical Advisory Group to the UN Global Commission on HIV/AIDS and the Law that delivered its report in 2012. She was also a Commissioner on the recently completed Independent Review of Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas, initiated by PAHO/WHO.

Mr. Ruggles Ferguson

President
Organization of Commonwealth Bar Associations

Ruggles Ferguson is a graduate of the University of the West Indies (Faculty of Law) and the Hugh Wooding Law School (Trinidad). He has been in private practice for the past 24 years (from 1996), focusing on criminal, civil and constitutional law. He has been involved in dozens of judicial review and constitutional applications covering a wide spectrum. For the past 20 years he has been the Managing Partner of Ciboney Chambers, one of the larger law firms in Grenada.

Mr. Ferguson is a former President of the Grenada Bar Association (2000-2008/2014-2016), the immediate past President of the OECS Bar Association, and the current President of the Organization of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations (OCCBA). He served two terms as President of the OECS Bar Association (2012-2014/2014-2016).

He has served on several local and regional bodies including the Public Service Board of Appeal in Grenada for over 10 years, until 2017; on the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (NTRC) for 5 years, until 2013; and on the Council of Legal Education (the regional governing body for law schools) for several years. He also served on the Constitution Reform Advisory Committee which led the work for the November 2016 Grenada Referendum and on the CCJ Advisory Committee which led the work for the November 2018 referendum to determine whether Grenada should join the Appellate Jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice.

Mr. Ferguson has appeared at all levels of the court, including the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Original Jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice. He is admitted to the Bars of Grenada, St Vincent & the Grenadines, St Lucia, Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, St Kitts & Nevis, British Virgin Islands (BVI) and the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago.

Mr. Ferguson is also President of the Grenada Chess Federation, a member of the International Chess Federation (FIDE).

Justice Rubie M. Nottage (Ret.)

Attorney-at-law
Moderator

Rubie Nottage is currently an Associate Tutor at the Eugene Dupuch Law School, Nassau, and holds the post of Associate Professor, Law Department, University of The Bahamas, where she lectures in Constitutional and Administrative Law.

Mrs. Nottage has served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, and Chancellor of the Anglican Church in the Province of the West Indies (CPWI) and in the Diocese of Nassau, Turks & Caicos Islands.

She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, UK, and holds academic degrees from Queen’s University, Canada (B.A.); King’s College, London (LL.B.); University College, London (LL.M.); Queen Mary College, London (PGDip); University of Cardiff, Wales (LL.M.); and Oxford University, England (M.A.).

Retired Justice Nottage was a Member of the 2013 Bahamas Constitutional Commission and a Co-Chair of the Commission’s Educational Team which conducted public consultations with the Bahamian populace prior to the Constitutional Referendum of 2017.

The Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers (CAJO) provides a host of judicial education engagements for judicial officers across the region including its Biennial Conference, training programmes and workshops on various topics and areas of law and practice, and a biannual Newsletter, CAJO News.

APEX is a Caribbean-based, special-purpose, not-for-profit agency created by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and dedicated to the delivery of technology-enabled solutions and capacity building services to support the needs of courts, law offices and related institutions in the region.

Connected Caribbean is a volunteer-based regional non-profit organization dedicated to promoting values-based initiatives in support of Caribbean integration and Caribbean development.

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States is an inter-governmental organization dedicated to economic harmonization and integration, protection of human and legal rights, and the encouragement of good governance between countries and territories in the Eastern Caribbean.