A prominent criminal defence attorney, two deceased legal luminaries and three Caribbean Court of Justice judges, two current and one retired, will be honoured as the Hugh Wooding Law School (HWLS) celebrates its 50th anniversary.
The awardees at the event, which will be held at the Hilton Trinidad Hotel and Conference Centre on Saturday, are Criminal Bar Association (CBA) president Israel Khan, SC, former Independent Senator Dana Seetahal, former attorney general Keith Sobion, CCJ president Adrian Saunders, CCJ Judge Andrew Burgess, and former CCJ Judge Rolston Nelson.
The Gala Dinner and Awards ceremony is the final of a series of events held this year to commemorate the school’s gold anniversary.
Khan graduated from the school in 1979 and was made a Senior Counsel in 2000.
He served as chairman of the Legal Aid and Advisory Authority between 2000 and 2003 and again from 2013 to 2015. He also headed the Police Protective Compensation Board and the Firearms Appeal Board in the past.
Khan, who served as an associate tutor in criminal law practice and procedure at the school for the past 36 years, was given a long service award in 2004. He also mentors students through an annual criminal law clinic at his Justitia Omnibus Law Chambers.
Seetahal graduated in the same class as Khan.
She worked at the Solicitor General’s Department, and as a magistrate and state prosecutor before entering private practice at Khan’s chambers.
In 2002, she was appointed an independent senator. Four years later, she was appointed Senior Counsel. She served as a lecturer at the school, where she held the position of Course Director in Criminal Practice and Procedure.
On May 4, 2014, Seetahal was shot dead behind the wheel of her SUV while driving along Hamilton Holder Street in Woodbrook.
Eleven men were charged with her murder and have been committed to stand trial.
Sobion, a graduate of the school and former classmate of Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, SC, served as attorney general between 1991 and 1995.
After his career in politics, Sobion served as principal of the Norman Manley Law School (NMLS) in Jamaica.
The NMLS, the HWLS and the Eugene Dupuch Law School in the Bahamas are the only postgraduate educational institutions in the regions at which law students can complete their postgraduate qualification in order to be called to the bar.
Sobion passed away in 2008 while holding the position.
Saunders, a native of St Vincent and the Grenadines, graduated from the law school in 1977.
He spent several years in private practice before being appointed as judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) in 1996.
Nine years later, he was elevated to the ECSC’s Court of Appeal.
In 2005, he was among the first cohort of judges to join the CCJ bench.
After former CCJ president Sir Dennis Byron retired in 2018, Saunders was appointed to head the regional appellate court based on the recommendation of the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission (RJLSC).
Burgess, a native of Barbados, was sworn in as a CCJ Judge in January 2019, having previously served as judge of the Court of Appeal of Barbados and dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill campus.
He is currently a judge on the seven-member panel of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal, having been appointed in 2013 for a five-year period.
In 2017, he was elected by his fellow judges to be the vice president of the tribunal.
Nelson, a graduate of the University of Oxford, did not attend the HWLS as he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in England in 1970, three years before it (HWLS) was established.
In 1973, he was appointed a tutor at the NMLS and was admitted to practice in Jamaica.
In 1976, he was admitted to practise in T&T. Almost 17 years later, he was appointed a Senior Counsel.
In 1999, he was appointed directly to the Court of Appeal without having first served as a High Court judge.
Six years later, he was appointed as a CCJ judge.
Despite his role as a judge, Nelson has been an associate tutor at the HWLS since 1978.
Nelson retired from the CCJ in 2017 and has since returned to private practice.