Justice Batts’s remarkable feat
Supreme Court judge scores with book explaining, in simple language, Jamaican law and the constitution
JUSTICE David Batts has revealed that the seed that germinated into his recently released book, The Law and Constitution for Every Jamaican, was planted from his first year in law school.
At the time one of the foundational courses was constitutional law.
Exposure to the course, he said, had him asking himself why only now was this knowledge being unveiled to him.
“I went to primary school, high school — a good high school — [went to] sixth form, so why am I only learning all of this now?” Batts, a Kingston College alumnus, shared in a discussion at the launch of the book.
“From then, as I grew in my practice, I realised that this lack of knowledge wasn’t just me,” said Batts who, after graduating from law school, practised for 26 years at Corporate Area-based firm Livingston Alexander and Levy.
Many of his clients, among them people in top professions, had no sense of the constitution’s contents.
“When I became a judge, I found that I had a little more time on my hands,” he said with a laugh, pointing out that in private practice lawyers are normally engaged with the demands of their clients, which most times result in seven-day work weeks.
In the introduction of the book, Batts, who was elevated to the bench in 2012, the same year he was conferred with the office of
Queen’s Counsel (now King’s
Counsel), shared the gripping experience that eventually pushed him to start working on the publication.
At the time he was sitting as a judge in the Supreme Court when a Mr Hemans, who was arrested by police, was brought before him.
Hemans, Justice Batts said, had been arrested after he complied with a uniformed policeman’s motion for him to stop the car he was driving. Hemans’ brother, who was driving behind in another car, took objection and asked the policeman the reason for the stop and why a search was required.
The cop did not take kindly to the intervention and his response prompted Hemans to say that it was only the fact that the policeman had a gun why he felt emboldened to respond in the way he did to his brother’s enquiry.
The policeman then put his weapon aside and proceeded to physically assault Hemans. The beating ended only after the cop’s colleagues intervened. Hemans was arrested, taken to a police station, where, “among other things, he was made to stoop on his haunches nude, in the guard room, which was open to the public”, Batts wrote.
He explained that, while listening to the evidence, what concerned him was the reason advanced for stopping Hemans on the day.
“The lawyer from the Attorney General’s department, who represented the police officer, said the stop was in order to conduct a search for guns and drugs,” Batts wrote, but noted that Hemans had made no claim about the interruption of his freedom of movement.
“In that courtroom no one seemed to appreciate that the entire episode would have been avoided had the constitutional rights of Mr Hemans, to go about his lawful business, been respected,” Justice Batts wrote.
“It seems that neither those charged to uphold the law nor those the subject of the law were aware that a police officer has to have an honestly held
suspicion, based on reasonable grounds, prior to interfering with the liberty of any subject. In other words, Mr Hemans should not have been stopped unless there was a reasonable cause to believe he had committed, was about to commit, or was in the act of committing some unlawful act, or there was some reason having to do with traffic control or public safety.
“No reason was given at the time of the incident and none was advanced in court,” Justice Batts observed in the introduction. After that case he decided “enough is enough, I am going to try to make my contribution ”, he explained during the launch discussion.
He said he started the project in 2017 and gave his daughter the draft to read. After she read it, she asked, “Daddy, who did you say this book is for?” “I said, ‘the ordinary Jamaican’. She said, ‘Well, I’m in university and I don’t understand a word.’ So that sort of discouraged me, so I put it down. Then COVID came along, I was at home with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and I picked it up back and I broke the back of it in that period of lockdown,” Batts explained.
The 164-page Ian Randle-published book has won plaudits from legal luminaries in Jamaica and across the region.
Caribbean Court of Justice President Justice Adrian Saunders, in the foreword, described it as “a remarkable feat, given its brevity and impressive sweep”.
Saunders said that, in less than 200 pages, Justice Batts “addresses the main features of the constitution and the law. Methodically, he goes through each of the 10 chapters of the constitution, explaining in simple language the essence of what each chapter conveys”.
Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Taylor, in a video message at the launch, highlighted aspects of the book, including Batts’s elaboration on the open justice principle that, except for a minority of cases, all citizens may walk into a courthouse and watch a case.
“This book is written for the layman interested in law or general affairs,” Taylor said, adding that Batts anticipated that readers may come from all backgrounds — market vendors, farmers, primary or high school students doing social studies or civics, or the tertiary-educated citizen without any background in law.
Describing the book as accessible, unintimidating, and written in language that is simple and not simplistic, Taylor recommended that Jamaicans acquire the book as well as a copy of the constitution and read them side by side.
Mona law lecturer Gabrielle Elliottwilliams said the book is a valuable entry point for prospective law students and the average person as it informs people of their rights and the State’s obligations.
Justice Batts, she added, offered a useful overview of the colonial origins and evolution of our legal system, Jamaica’s constitutional development and the road to Independence, rights and the rule of law, among other things.
Distinguished jurist Justice C Dennis Morrison, KC, stated that the book was “brilliantly conceived and executed”. He argued that it should be made compulsory reading for all high school students and suggested that people being employed to courts’ offices and departments of government should be “given a copy as part of their recruitment package”.
Professor Stephen Vasciannie, former Jamaica ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States and an expert in international law, described the book as “authoritative, stimulating, devoid of unnecessary jargon, and above all, deeply protective of the rights of the individual in Jamaica’s challenging social environment”.
Vasciannie’s comment described well the fundamental thinking that went into Batts’s work, a point which the esteemed judge succinctly made in the introduction as he argued that the efforts by the State, since political Independence in 1962, to educate Jamaicans about the law and the constitution had been inadequate.
“It is this realisation, more than any other, which promoted my desire to write,” he said. “It is my hope that every Jamaican will one day understand the rights and duties that go with citizenship. If this publication causes even one Jamaican to say, ‘I now know and understand my role, obligations, and rights,’ it will have been a success.”
The book is being sold for $3,000 and US$23 outside of Jamaica.