The le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty is mourn­ing the death of Prof Sime­on McIn­tosh, for­mer dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Law, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos.

McIn­tosh, who re­tired from the dean­ship four years ago, died on March 22.

In pay­ing trib­ute to McIn­tosh, Stephen Vas­cian­nie, Ja­maican Am­bas­sador to the USA de­scribed him in a farewell let­ter as a gi­ant in the field of ju­rispru­dence and a Caribbean schol­ar of rare dis­tinc­tion.

Vas­cian­nie said McIn­tosh, who was af­fec­tion­ate­ly called Randy, was a per­fec­tion­ist in mat­ters per­tain­ing to ju­rispru­dence, and a true in­spi­ra­tion to oth­ers.

McIn­tosh wrote sev­er­al books, Vas­cian­nie re­called, among them: Caribbean Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form: Re­think­ing the West In­di­an Poli­ty, Kelsen in the Grena­da Court: Es­says in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Le­gal­i­ty, Fun­da­men­tal Rights and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nance: Es­says in Caribbean Ju­rispru­dence, and West In­di­an Con­sti­tu­tion­al Dis­course: A Po­et­ics of Re­con­struc­tion, which were ded­i­cat­ed to fam­i­ly mem­bers.

"These books and nu­mer­ous jour­nal ar­ti­cles, all demon­strate an­a­lyt­i­cal pre­ci­sion, metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to de­tail, ex­ten­sive and deep re­search from ju­ris­dic­tions both with­in and with­out the Caribbean, and a pro­nounced de­sire to pro­mote the de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean law for the bet­ter­ment of the re­gion."

As part of his de­sire for en­hanced Caribbean de­vel­op­ment, Vas­cian­nie re­mem­bered, McIn­tosh placed great em­pha­sis on na­tion­al dig­ni­ty.

"I can still see my dis­tin­guished col­league now, tack­ling with elo­quence those who are dis­in­clined to em­brace the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice. For him, de­par­ture from the ju­di­cial arrange­ments con­cern­ing the Privy Coun­cil was an im­per­a­tive, a mat­ter im­pa­tient of con­tin­ued de­bate, and a sym­bol of na­tion­al self-re­spect."

Vas­cian­nie stat­ed that McIn­tosh was dis­in­clined to en­ter­tain the monar­chy in the in­de­pen­dent Caribbean.

"For him, the British monar­chy, aris­ing as it did from the unique fea­tures of British con­sti­tu­tion­al his­to­ry, was suit­able for Britain: but, he main­tained, con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­tures must em­anate from their lo­cal cir­cum­stances, and so, as a mat­ter of sov­er­eign au­thor­i­ty, Caribbean gov­ern­ments should work to cut the um­bil­i­cal cord with the Unit­ed King­dom, as a mat­ter of high im­por­tance," Vas­cian­nie wrote.

World of Ideas

McIn­tosh, Vas­cian­nie re­called, was al­ways keen to pass on the ex­cite­ment he de­rived from liv­ing in the world of ideas.

Up­on his re­tire­ment, McIn­tosh worked as­sid­u­ous­ly on re­vi­sions to the Grena­di­an Con­sti­tu­tion, and was al­ways pre­pared to make long, long-dis­tance calls through­out the Caribbean to ex­plore ideas about re­gion­al con­sti­tu­tions.

He took very se­ri­ous­ly the du­ties of be­ing a se­nior aca­d­e­m­ic.

"He was pre­pared to ca­jole oth­ers in­to greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, he en­cour­aged in­tel­lec­tu­al fer­ment, he was not afraid to tell you when he thought you were right or wrong–in the con­text of le­gal ar­gu­men­ta­tion, ar­gu­ments about ex­pan­sion of le­gal ed­u­ca­tion or about more mun­dane, day-to-day is­sues of ad­min­is­tra­tion that can over-oc­cu­py the minds of some denizens of the acad­e­my."

On the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue of the ex­pan­sion of op­por­tu­ni­ties in le­gal ed­u­ca­tion, McIn­tosh, Vas­cian­nie ex­plained, was on the side of open­ing up.

"His pre­ferred po­si­tion, to be sure, was that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Cave Hill Cam­pus, should pro­vide in­creased places, and build on its tra­di­tion of ex­cel­lence. For him, there­fore, at­ten­tion should be paid to the prac­ti­cal is­sues of re­search fa­cil­i­ties, li­brary space, and stu­dent ac­com­mo­da­tion."

About McIn­tosh

McIn­tosh was born and raised in Grena­da.

He grad­u­at­ed from York Uni­ver­si­ty in 1971 with a Bach­e­lor's De­gree in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture. He then pro­ceed­ed to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law and grad­u­at­ed with the Ju­ris Doc­tor in 1974.

From 1975 to 1976, McIn­tosh taught at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ok­la­homa, Col­lege of Law in Nor­man, Ok­la­homa.

He joined the Fac­ul­ty of Howard Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law in 1976 and be­came a pro­fes­sor with in­def­i­nite tenure in 1984.

In 1991, McIn­tosh re­signed from Howard Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law to take up a po­si­tion at the Fac­ul­ty of Law, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Named Prof of Law Emer­i­tus at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in 1991, Mc In­tosh, in 1992, was ap­point­ed Read­er in Ju­rispru­dence and Prof of Ju­rispru­dence in 1996.

In Oc­to­ber 2010, McIn­tosh had crit­i­cised the re­luc­tance of T&T and Ja­maica to be­come full-fledged mem­bers of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice.