Revised Laws of Guyana, Law Reports to be launched on January 14

Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has announced that the revised edition of the Laws of Guyana, updated from 2012 to December 31, 2021, as well as the Law Reports of Guyana from 2008 to 2021, will be launched on January 14.

Speaking during his programme “Issues in the News” on Tuesday, Nandlall explained the process of law revision, reminding that the last time this exercise was done was in 2012.

“On that occasion, the law revision exercise extended as far back as 1977 because since 1977 we never revised the laws of this country until 2012. So, you had a large volume of laws to revise, to bring in all the amendments, find them, bring them together, insert them into principal law and then put all the new laws together, renumbering them, and when that process is completed, it’s called the revised Laws of Guyana,” he noted.

“Revision of laws is the process whereby all the amendments that have been made to principal legislation and all the new laws are consolidated into volumes and published one time as the laws of the country as of a particular date. The date here would be the laws are revised as of the 31st of December 2021,” he further outlined.

Nandlall also underscored the importance of the Law Reports of Guyana. The last time law reports were printed was in 2012, from 1977 to 2007.

“Judges decide cases and the decisions of these judges guide future decisions for there to be uniformity and consistency in judicial decision making and as a fundamental principle of the rule of law, a society must have judges who make decisions consistently and who follow existing judicial decisions. It’s called the doctrine of precedent and the court system is structured in such a way that the decisions of the higher court, binds the decision of lower court,” he explained, noting that only important cases, that determine critical principles of law to guide future decisions on similar issues, are reported.

Meanwhile, he related that work has already begun on the next set of revised laws of Guyana and law reports.

“As soon as we launch this up to 2021 December, we will begin a process, to start to compile from 2022 to next set of years. That process has already begun and this has to be a continuous exercise,” he stated, emphasising that the process is not an easy one.

“These are not ordinary achievements, they are very tedious work, complicated work, time consuming work and they cost a lot of money,” he explained. Nevertheless, Nandlall emphasised that the exercise is crucial.

“It’s important that the laws of a country are in one place, are easily accessible, and that the case law of a country and that the case law of a country is also equally accessible and in a centralised place,” he posited.

Reports are that the last comprehensive revision of Guyana’s laws, known as the “Purple Book/Volumes,” was published in 2012. Currently, there are 14 volumes of the Laws of Guyana but with launch of the new editions, this number will double to 28 volumes.

Reports also indicated that Nandlall had said that the government will print 200 sets of those 28 volumes. In addition, to the hard copies, the soft copy of the revised Laws of Guyana will also be available.