Moss, Alan

English

Cornell Law Library

International Journal of Legal Information
the Official Journal of the International Association of Law Libraries
Volume 37
Issue 2 Summer 2009 Article 9
3-1-2010
The Acquisition of Primary Legal Materials from
the English-speaking Caribbean
Alan Moss
Alan Moss, Ltd.
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Recommended Citation
Moss, Alan (2009) "The Acquisition of Primary Legal Materials from the English-speaking Caribbean," International Journal of Legal
Information: Vol. 37: Iss. 2, Article 9.
Available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/ijli/vol37/iss2/9
 210 
The Acquisition of Primary Legal Materials from the 
English-speaking Caribbean 
 
 
 
ALAN MOSS∗ 
 
 
 
In this presentation I shall be making reference particularly to the 
islands of the Eastern Caribbean, which are the jurisdictions I visit on a 
regular basis.  I shall exclude Belize, which in the bookselling world we 
consider to be the province of Central American dealers, and also Guyana, for 
which no-one, I am afraid, seems to want to take responsibility.  It’s a difficult 
place to reach, and there’s little to buy when you finally get there. 
 
Since it’s impossible in the time available to give you a complete run-
down on the ins-and-outs of all of these jurisdictions, I shall instead examine 
some of the factors which affect the ease with which one can acquire 
legislation and look at just one or two of the individual jurisdictions which are 
in one way or another interesting. 
 
The jurisdictions vary tremendously in size, of course.  And you will 
observe as we go along that there is no correspondence between size on the 
one hand and ease of access to legislation on the other. 
 
The first factor we shall consider is whether you can deal with these 
jurisdictions and their associated publishers from a distance.  Because I am 
now a “known” customer I can purchase material from the Bahamas and the 
British Virgin Islands without the necessity of visiting the territory.  But in 
order to become “known,” of course, I had to visit them more than once.   
 
The only jurisdiction which has a system in place to take your money and 
ship your materials is Anguilla.  They have a website - www.anguillalaws.com –  
                                                 
∗ Alan Moss is the director of Alan Moss, Ltd.  He was Acquisitions Librarian for 
more than 25 years at the Main Library of the University of the West Indies, Cave 
Hill Campus, in Barbados.  Mr. Moss has an intimate knowledge of the region and its 
book-trade, coupled with a sympathetic understanding of libraries’ needs.  The 
company builds on Moss’ experience and publishes titles which are of interest to 
academic libraries and their clientele. 
2009] ALAN MOSS   211 
 
 
and one may pay by credit card.  It is not quite as straightforward as it may 
seem, because shipping is via DHL and they wish you to pay the exact DHL 
shipping costs.  Even so, it can be done. 
 
It is probably not coincidental that in all of the jurisdictions which I 
do not have to visit in order to buy materials – Anguilla, the Bahamas and the 
British Virgin Islands – the US dollar is used as an official currency, parallel 
to the local currency.  Most other jurisdictions require payment in the local 
currency, and doing this may be either difficult or sometimes even impossible.  
The members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States all use the 
Eastern Caribbean dollar, and I can certainly walk into a bank in Barbados 
and buy a draft in EC$, but the same cannot be said for the Jamaican dollar or 
the Trinidad-and-Tobago dollars.  This immediately precludes my being able 
to deal with those territories from a distance, even if they were otherwise 
prepared to ship. 
 
So, being able to purchase and ship legal materials from Caribbean 
jurisdictions from a distance is very much the exception.  For most 
jurisdictions, you must either go there in person or have someone on the 
ground locally to act on your behalf.  
 
There is also the question of determining what the local procedures 
are for acquiring legislation.  As most of you will know, current legislation in 
these jurisdictions is usually issued in the Official Gazette, and most of them 
also publish an annual compilation of laws.  These publications are normally 
offered for sale at the Government Printery.  At long intervals, however, a 
consolidation or “Revised Edition” of all laws in force at a particular date is 
issued, and these are frequently sold by a department attached to the Attorney 
General’s Chambers. 
 
In either case, payment can sometimes be accepted by the agency 
selling them, but it may also be that one must pay the Treasury, which may be 
close by.  Or not.   For example, in St. Vincent, the Government Printery was 
recently relocated to an industrial estate about 5 miles out of town, and since 
payments must be made in Kingstown, one now needs to travel 20 miles in 
order to purchase St. Vincent’s laws.  For me, that has made the difference 
between doing without a rented car and having to rent one whenever I visit 
the island. 
 
I’ll speak now a little about Trinidad & Tobago, and I should at this 
point express the hope that my Trinidadian friends present will not take 
offence when I comment that Trinidad & Tobago, which one might expect to 
212 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEGAL INFORMATION [Vol. 37.2 
 
 
be one of the more sophisticated jurisdictions, contrives to present difficulties 
all of its own, although it redeems itself in other areas.   
 
The Government Printery for Trinidad & Tobago is where one 
purchases gazette subscriptions and annual volumes of legislation.  The 
printer can accept payments, but that is of little practical advantage with 
regard to annual volumes since none has been published since 1999.   
Uniquely, however, Trinidad & Tobago’s gazette subscription is made up of 
two elements: the Government Printery’s charge, and that of the postal 
service, TT Post.  Since TT Post is not always prompt in deciding what its 
charge for the year will be, it can be challenging to determine at what point in 
the year one will be able to pay a Gazette subscription. 
 
This division of responsibility in effect makes impossible the 
claiming of issues which have not been received, for the Government Printery 
is always quite sure that it passed on all copies of the Gazette to TT Post for 
delivery, but since the deliveries are unrecorded, TT Post cannot be held 
accountable for the failure of any issue to arrive. 
 
The purchase of Trinidad & Tobago’s recent Revised Edition, on the 
other hand, provides a much more positive experience (once one has managed 
to make payment for it).   The requisite sum must be paid by bank draft or in 
TT$ at a somewhat Dickensian location, but once this has been achieved, the 
31 volumes in 3 cartons are shipped by Federal Express to wherever one 
wishes.  I have bought several of the sets, and I am happy to say that I still do 
not know what the cartons they come in look like. 
 
To turn now to the Commonwealth of Dominica, if I may give the 
island its formal title and by doing so distinguish it from the Dominican 
Republic, which my friend and colleague Darlene Hull will comment on in 
her presentation, I can report that – unusually perhaps – access to its 
legislation has recently been improved through private enterprise.  Since the 
early 1980s no annual volumes of laws have been produced for sale, and its 
latest Revised Edition is that for 1990-1991, updated to the end of 1992.    
 
Four or five years ago I learned through conversation with the 
Government Printer there that a few annual volumes were in fact being 
produced, mainly for government departments, although none of them were 
being offered for sale.  I suggested to the Government Printer that he might 
consider producing a small number of copies of the volumes to sell to me, and 
he readily agreed.  Very good!  The only problem, though, was that he never 
found it possible to follow through on his promise. 
2009] ALAN MOSS   213 
 
 
Eventually, however, I was put in touch with someone much lower 
down the hierarchy at the Government Printery: its principal binder.  It turned 
out that he, like many others in his profession, was not averse to doing 
additional work in his own time.  He was very soon able to provide me with 
not only current annual volumes of laws, but also sets of back volumes to fill 
the void which had existed since the early 1980s. 
 
My understanding is that a similar situation exists in Trinidad, where 
at least one binder is producing annual volumes, mainly for attorneys-at-law.  
As we have seen, the latest officially published volume is that for 1999; I am 
at present trying to tap into that unofficial source for my clients. 
 
And finally, another look at Anguilla, which, you will recall, was 
singled out for positive mention earlier.  Much of its success in the production 
and sale of its legislation is, I am sure, due to the establishment of a Law 
Revision Centre under the aegis of the Attorney General’s department.   
Although operating on a not-for-profit basis, the Centre appears to have 
brought a very business-like approach to the law revision process.  There have 
been regular biennial updates to Anguilla’s 2000 consolidation, bringing the 
coverage to 2006; a separate compilation of the island’s financial legislation 
has been made available on CD-ROM; and a compilation of United Kingdom 
statutory instruments which relate to Anguilla is soon to be published.   
 
The Centre is also using its acquired expertise to undertake law revision on 
behalf of two other British dependent territories in the Caribbean: Montserrat 
and the Turks & Caicos Islands.   Thus, we may expect to see a new Turks & 
Caicos Islands revised edition within the next year or two, and, in 2009, an 
update to Montserrat’s 2002 consolidation.  The Centre’s website, 
http://lawrevisionbookshop.net/, gives details of its work.  The Centre’s hope 
is that other jurisdictions may choose to utilise its services.  My fear, 
however, is that law revision may be seen as too sovereign a function to be 
contracted out.


The Acquisition of Primary Legal Materials from the English-speaking Caribbean

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The Acquisition of Primary Legal Materials from the English-speaking Caribbean

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