Presentation to the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers
The 4th Biennial Conference of the Association of Caribbean Judicial Officers was held in Montego Bay, Jamaica, from September 24-26. The Conference was attended by over 120 judicial officers from the Anglophone Caribbean, Curacao, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada and the USA.
At the event, Equinoccio’s expert, Prof. Frédéric Jenny made a presentation to Judges to sensitize them on the challenges for Judges in enforcing Competition law because of its economic base, and the role of Judges in enforcement of the law. This presentation was part of the activities of a CARIFORUM-EU Capacity Building Project, in order that Judges in the CARIFORUM region are sensitised to the specific challenges of competition law enforcement.
The session was well attended and were several panel discussions in which a variety of Regional and international distinguished jurists and academics participated.
Prof. Jenny’s main conclusions were:
- Competition law plays a central and a growing role in market economies by ensuring that decentralised markets work for the benefit of consumers. This is true in the CARICOM region as it is true in the rest of the world.
- Whether in administrative systems or in prosecutorial systems, the judiciary has a crucial role to play in the adjudication or in the review of competition law cases
- Competition law provisions are often very general and judicial interpretation is likely to play a crucial role.
- The judicial interpretation of competition law requires the judge to have some understanding of the economic analysis of markets in order to allow him/her to distinguish between pro-competitive practices, which should not be deterred and anti-competitive practices which should be stopped.
- There are several tools, institutional, procedural and methodological, which can contribute to facilitating the task of judges in the implementation of competition law. In each jurisdiction, the judiciary should consider using the tools most relevant to its legal system.
The training course is an output of the CARIFORUM/EU Capacity Building Project which is funded under the 10th EDF. A consortium led by Equinoccio which includes the London School of Economics, SGS and Maastricht School of Management is implementing the project.