July 20, 2006
From July 6th to 8th, almost a hundred people attended the
Northeast People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference on Trade
& Legal Aid: Tools for Economic Development and Independence in
Nassau, Bahamas. The themes of the conference were the
recurrent tensions between sovereignty and trade and economic
development and the challenge of delivering legal services to the
poor and marginalized in the Caribbean.
Photo
Gallery
Several members of the St. John’s law faculty
participated. Professor
Elaine Chiu was one of the chief organizers of the conference
and also presented a paper entitled Culture and Parental
Autonomy, Professor
Leonard Baynes was a panelist at a session designed to mentor
junior faculty of color, Professor
Akilah Folami delivered a presentation on Deliberative
Democracy and Hip-Hop, Professor
Janice Villiers was a member of the planning committee for the
conference and Professor
Cheryl Wade served as a conference commentator.
The rest of the participants included legal academics from
American law schools and also from Jamaica, Trinidad, the Bahamas,
and Great Britain. In addition, the conference attendees were
addressed by the Minister of Finance (James Smith), the Attorney
General and Minister of Legal Affairs (Allyson Maynard-Gibson) and
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Burton Hall) of the
Bahamas.
This conference was co-sponsored by the American Caribbean Law
Initiative and was proudly supported by the Ronald
H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at
St. John’s University School of Law. It was hosted by the
Eugene Dupuch Law School of the Bahamas.