Black Power in the Caribbean

Abstract

Abstract The rise of comparative constitutional studies has made our world much smaller and more accessible than ever before. We are in an era of unprecedented interest in understanding and learning from others as individuals and institutions invest enormous amounts of time and resources into facilitating cross-national exchange and education in constitutional law. Yet some parts of the globe are still waiting to be discovered. With few exceptions, the Caribbean has remained understudied and underappreciated outside of the region itself. Not only on its own terms as a part of the larger world, but for how the lived experiences of the countries in the region can help illuminate new and productive approaches to challenges facing constitutional democracies across the globe. This book begins to fill the enormous void in our comparative knowledge of the constitutional systems of the world. The Caribbean is home not only many different constitutional systems, but also to different traditions of constitutionalism, making it more appropriate to speak of the various Caribbean constitutionalisms. The book seeks to both inform readers about these traditions of constitutionalism and to illuminate their implications for constitutional adjudication, evolution, interpretation, and reform. What results is a rich diversity of historical and modern constitutional experience that puts an end, once and for all, to the conventional misunderstanding of Caribbean constitutions as being one and the same.