Module 1: Caribbean Legal Systems
Module 1 tests the nature, functions and classification of law, and how Caribbean legal systems were built from competing traditions. Questions usually ask you to explain a concept, distinguish two concepts, or illustrate with a Caribbean example, so every answer needs doctrine, illustration and consequence.
Defining law
- Austin: law is a command of a sovereign backed by sanctions - weak on constitutional and international law.
- Hart: a union of primary (duty-imposing) and secondary (power-conferring) rules.
- Natural law: an unjust rule is not law; legal positivism: validity does not depend on moral merit.
- Safe working definition: rules recognised as binding, applied by courts and enforced by state institutions.
Functions
Social control and order; peaceful dispute settlement; protecting rights and freedoms; regulating relations (contract, property, family); allocating resources; controlling public power; expressing shared morality.
Classifications
- Public (state–individual: constitutional, criminal, administrative) v private (individual–individual).
- Criminal v civil: parties, burden and standard of proof, outcome.
- Substantive (rights and duties) v procedural (enforcement).
- Common law v equity: two streams of judge-made law, now administered by the same courts.
- Municipal v international.
- 'Civil law' also names the Romano-Germanic, code-based family - not the civil side of the criminal/civil divide.
A mixed Caribbean
English common law and equity were received through settlement, cession or conquest, and cut off at a reception date fixed by statute; local legislation then built on them. Two states are hybrids: Saint Lucia's Civil Code (1879), rooted in the Code Napoléon, governs private law alongside English-style criminal and procedural law; Guyana's civil law has a Roman-Dutch substratum. Courts there reason from codes as well as precedent, and cite comparative authority.
Worked example
A supermarket guard punches a customer. The DPP charges assault; the customer sues in tort. Reasoning: one set of facts, two actions. The charge is public law - the state prosecutes, proof is beyond reasonable doubt, and the result is conviction and punishment. The claim is private law - the claimant sues, proof is on the balance of probabilities, and the result is damages. Naming both branches and contrasting parties, standard and remedy earns the marks; a bare label does not.
Traps
- Calling Caribbean systems 'pure common law', ignoring Saint Lucia and Guyana.
- Confusing 'civil law' (the code family) with civil as opposed to criminal.
- Treating equity as a separate court: it is a body of principles applied by the same court, with discretionary remedies.
- Classifying without stating the practical consequence.