Professor Justice (Ret’d) Courtney A. Abel, Professor of Law (Legal Practice) and Head of the Department of Law, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Guyana, has earned a second major regional honour for his distinguished contribution to the legal profession, receiving the 2026 Organisation of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations (OCCBA) Award for Distinguished Service to the Legal Profession and the Judiciary.
The award was presented virtually during the OCCBA Retreat on Saturday, July 25, 2026, following his selection by the 16 member bar associations of the Commonwealth Caribbean and the Executive Council of OCCBA. It recognises his dedicated and significant contributions to the legal profession in the Commonwealth Caribbean, particularly his service to the Judiciary of Belize and his contributions to OCCBA and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Bar Association (OECS) Bars.
The OCCBA recognition follows the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Professor Abel by the Society of Caribbean Lawyers (SOCAL) earlier this year. Together these honours represent recognition from two important segments of the Caribbean legal community with which his professional journey has been closely connected. Professor Abel stated, “Receiving the OCCBA Award was deeply moving because it came from what I regard as my professional family: the organised Bars of the Commonwealth Caribbean.
The distinguished legal scholar reflected that much of his regional work over the years involved practical efforts to strengthen bar associations, protect the independence of the legal profession and judiciary, support regional institutions and give Caribbean lawyers a collective voice. In retrospect, he sees these efforts as “part of a broader movement towards Caribbean self-authorship”.
Professor Abel’s legal career has spanned practice, judicial service, regional Bar leadership and academia. He served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Belize and has held leadership positions within regional legal organisations, including the OECS Bar Association and the Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Association.
These experiences, he said, have shaped his understanding of the relationship between law and the society it serves. “The most important lesson is that law cannot properly be understood apart from the society whose life it orders. Practice taught me that law affects real people long before it becomes doctrine in a textbook. Judicial office taught me humility: the immense responsibility involved when one human being is authorised by society to exercise judgment over another,” he stated.
At the University of Guyana , Professor Abel has brought these experiences into the classroom using his background in practice, judicial service and regional Bar leadership to contribute to the development of future legal professionals. He explained that his concern extends beyond ensuring that students understand legal rules. “I want students to understand who they are, the society in which those rules operate, the histories which produced them, and the responsibility they inherit for improving them,” he said.
He added that legal education should help to form “thoughtful, ethical, critical and imaginative lawyers capable of becoming responsible authors of the Caribbean legal future.”
The receipt of the 2026 Organisation of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations (OCCBA) Award comes just before Professor Abel assumed the role of Head of the Department of Law at the University of Guyana, adding a new dimension to his continued contribution to the University and the legal profession.
For Professor Abel, however, the honours received since the start of the year are not viewed as the culmination of his professional journey. Instead, he sees them as reinforcing the responsibility to continue serving and contributing to the generations that follow. “An award should not become a chair in which one sits. At its best, it becomes another place from which one is called to serve,” he said.
Reflecting on the wider meaning of his career and the recognition he has received, Professor Abel said that his greatest satisfaction lies not in the honours themselves, but in the contribution made along the way, “The greatest reward is not recognition. It is the quiet knowledge that one tried to leave the road a little clearer for those who must travel it next.”
The University of Guyana congratulates Professor Justice (Ret’d) Courtney A. Abel on receiving the 2026 OCCBA Award for Distinguished Service to the Legal Profession and the Judiciary and recognises his continued contribution to law, justice and legal education in Guyana and the wider Commonwealth Caribbean. (Feature by the Department of Events, Conferences and Communication, University of Guyana)
