Margaret Ramsay-Hale has been sworn in as Cayman’s first female chief justice.
Clothed in her late father’s barrister robes, Ramsay-Hale was sworn in on Tuesday, 25 Oct., witnessed by Cayman’s political leaders, her fellow judges, the wider legal fraternity, and scores of viewers online.
Her appointment runs through 11 Oct. 2031.
Historically, chief justices have been sworn in behind closed doors in the governor’s office. However, one of her first acts as the new judicial head was to take a different approach.
“For me it was very important, symbolically, to be sworn in, in the public view; this is where we work,” said Ramsay-Hale, as the normally stoic judge began a tear-filled address thanking her supporters and those who have inspired her along her career.
Her legal tenure spans 31 years, the majority of which has been on Cayman’s benches in its Summary and Grand Courts.
She first arrived in Cayman in September 1998, where she was appointed as a magistrate by Smellie, who had become chief justice in June the same year.
‘Not her first rodeo’
Her three-and-a-half-decade career has seen Ramsay-Hale working in Jamaica, Cayman and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
In Cayman, she has worked as a magistrate, chief magistrate, Grand Court judge and now chief justice. Her legal counterparts have hailed her as champion of defendants suffering from mental-health issues or drug addiction, as well as juvenile offenders, who have found themselves before Cayman’s courts.
Prior to her most recent appointment, she also made history when she became the Turks and Caicos Islands’ first female chief justice in 2014.
“This is not her first rodeo,” said now former Chief Justice Smellie. “She already made history upon becoming the first lady chief justice for the Turks and Caicos Islands. So, what we will witness today is a remarkable and historical double first, a second appointment as the first lady chief justice for two different jurisdictions.”
Becoming a court of excellence
As for her ambitions for Cayman’s courts, Ramsay-Hale announced plans for “becoming a court of excellence” by improving overall efficiency across all aspects of the Judicial Administration.
“In my tenure as chief justice, the goal of the Cayman Islands judiciary will be to establish a blueprint for court excellence,” she said. “We will be adopting the international framework for court excellence which is in brief a quality management system to help courts improve their performance.”
The framework is said to have been the result of a consortium comprised of legal organisations from Europe, Asia and the United States.
“The idea of achieving excellence through adopting performance standards and applying performance measures is not new,” she said. “This is evidence-based work that we are about to embark on which we hope will be transformative in terms… of the service we deliver to the public and other court users.”
Although Ramsay-Hale said more information would be forthcoming at the Grand Court opening in July, she did hint at building on Smellie’s mission to make justice more accessible. One such change, she said, would be installing internet-enabled kiosks in public libraries to allow people to scan and upload legal documents.
In closing, she repeated her oath to serve the people of Cayman and thanked them for their acceptance of her appointment.
“The public response to my appointment has been nothing short of extraordinary. It has been warm, it has resonated with confidence,” she said. “The only thing that I hope is that I do not disappoint.”
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