Justice Shanks departs after clearing civil backlog

He was here for only a short time but he leaves a long shadow on the quality of Belizean justice. The terms of Supreme Court Justice Shanks formally comes to an end on Thursday and last Friday night the Bar Association honoured him with a farewell ceremony. The British jurist was presented with a published volume of 30 of his judgements, which forms part of the Belize Law Reports series. Shanks began his temporary assignment in January and cleared a large backlog of cases. According to a bipartisan cross section of lawyers, he performed his task with both erudition and good humor. On his docket were a number of libel claims and other civil cases. His most newsworthy official act was the nearly one million dollar judgement against the Belize Airports Authority for forcibly evicting the tenants of a duty free store from the arrivals area of the PGIA.