Gabrielle Elliott-Williams researches and writes primarily in the areas of public international law, human rights law and constitutional law with a strong interest in the work of the Caribbean Court of Justice.

‘Jamaica: Legal Response to Covid-19’ is the product of collaborative research conducted at MonaLaw by a team of lecturers, tutors and independent researchers. Gabrielle Elliott-Williams and Tracy Robinson served as co-rapporteurs and co-authors. Kamille Adair Morgan (independent researcher and MonaLaw lecturer (2017-8)), Jeffrey Foreman (MonaLaw tutor), Dionne Jackson-Miller (MonaLaw tutor and graduate student) and Tenesha Myrie (MonaLaw lecturer) were part of the research team and also co-authors.

‘Jamaica: Legal Response to Covid-19’ is a chapter in The Oxford Compendium of National Legal Responses to Covid-19 (OUP 2021) coedited by Jeff King, Octavio Ferraz and others. The Compendium is a global academic collaboration mapping legal responses to Covid-19 in about 40 participating countries and territories. The Jamaica chapter, like the other country chapters, explores the role of public law, institutional adaptation, public health measures, social and labour policy applied in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and their impact on human rights generally and on particular vulnerable groups.

Her article ‘Who Belongs?: The CCJ Reveals Caribbean Identity’s Inclusive Potentiality’ (2020) 69(1) Social and Economic Studies 73-90. She explains that The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) was established to further the Caribbean’s decolonization process. Given its role as a constitutional court, and that decolonization begins with recognition of our interdependence and deep yearning to belong, the CCJ’s jurisprudence in dealing with issues of belonging can give insight into the Caribbean identity being revealed and fashioned by the Court. Tomlinson v the State of Trinidad and Tobago, and McEwan v the Attorney General of Guyana, are cases in which the Court is seen working out questions of who belongs in the Caribbean. Her article was cited by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in Marin v R [2021] CCJ 6 (AJ) BZ on the approach to constitutional interpretation.

In ‘The CCJ Decolonizing Caribbean Constitutionalism’ (2019) 45(4) Commonwealth Law Bulletin 742-751, Ms Elliott-Williams is concerned with the Caribbean Court of Justice as conceived to further the Anglophone Caribbean’s decolonization process. Given that decolonization included not just transitions from colony to independent statehood but also the repudiation of imperial formations, she explains the Court’s capacity to do this is evident in the McEwan Case. Using bold approaches to interpretation, the CCJ effectively erased the general savings law clause (which was previously treated as effective in immunizing colonial laws from inconsistency with the Bill of Rights) and affirmed the fundamental rights of trans persons. She argues that erasure is the result of proper methods of interpretation and not overreach since savings clauses are now functionally obsolete. She also argues that CCJ is demonstrating its decolonizing capacity in a context where, it is argued, the Privy Council cannot. Her work was cited by the Caribbean Court of Justice in Belize International Services v Attorney General [2020] CCJ 9 (AJ) BZ on the CCJ’s role as a decolonizing instrument.

In the article The Public Morality Limit in the Commonwealth Caribbean Conventional Model Constitution” (2010) University of the West Indies Student Law Review, she offers a critique of a 2008 Court of Appeal decision from St. Kitts-Nevis on public morality as a justification for limiting free speech.

Since its publication, her research has been recommended reading in the teaching of the course Commonwealth Caribbean Human Rights Law. Her research was also extensively cited in arguments for Caleb Orozco in litigation that challenged the constitutionality of a law in Belize criminalising “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”. In a 2016 ruling, the Chief Justice of Belize found for Orozco and held that this law was unconstitutional—violating the rights to dignity, privacy, equality and freedom of expression—to the extent that it criminalised consensual sex between adults. A key pillar of the case was whether the unnatural crime, as it relates to consensual sex between adults, could be justified on the grounds of public morality. The Chief Justice concluded that it could not.