UG law dep’t’s operations for review -Vice Chancellor

While expressing his desire to make the Department of Law an independent faculty, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana (UG) Professor Ivelaw Griffith said last Thursday that a review of the unit’s operations will be done as part of planned institutional strengthening.

Griffith made the disclosure while giving closing remarks at the Fourth Conversation on Law and Society, which was hosted by UG at Duke Lodge, in Georgetown.

“Many colleagues in the room are going to be approached over the next few months as we start an exercise at the University of Guyana to review our Department of Law. We want to be able to strengthen what our Department of Law does,” he explained.

Griffith stressed that his desire is to have an independent Faculty of Law. “We want to be able to look at what we do, how we do it, what are the resources needed to strengthen it, the scholarship, the Moot Court preparation, all the elements. So we have started the first part of the process …a self-study to understand who we are, where we are, what we have in the Department,” he said, while adding that the Improved Access to Justice in the Caribbean (IMPACT Justice) project, which is funded by the Government of Canada, has agreed to lead the review team.

It is unclear whether this move is part of the university’s response to government’s plan to establish a law school. UG has already allocated 10 acres of land to serve as the site for the proposed JOF Haynes Law School.