PM Responds to NEAB’s Concerns about Recent Judge Appointments

Senior Counsel Lisa Shoman and Professor Westmin James have been appointed to the Supreme Court bench on a one-year tenure.  Their appointments, however, have raised the ire of the National Evangelical Association of Belize which has come out strongly against the pair of lawyers who represented Caleb Orozco and the United Belize Advocacy Movement, UNIBAM, in the Section Fifty-three challenge.  NEAB has voiced its discontent with the appointments and today the prime minister responded to their concerns.

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I do know of two lawyers, two excellent lawyers, Lisa Shoman, who is a local and a professor at UWI, Westmin James, who in fact applied after there was due process, after there was a fair and transparent advertising process for, inviting applicants to fill the vacancies on the Supreme Court.  Both of them applied, among others, and the Judicial and Legal Services Commission, as I understand it, in fact selected those two.  Now they did both appear in that so-called UNIBAM case and they appeared as counsel for UNIBAM and that is what is upsetting clearly the NEAB, the National Evangelical Association of Belize.  But the association needs to understand that not because lawyers appear in one particular case or another, in a case that has a controversial implications and they took the position, as they are entitled to, in favor of their clients.  You’re not supposed to turn away cases, you know.  You’re supposed to represent any and everybody.”