FOR SAMANTHA ROLLE
SUPREME COURT
10TH DECEMBER 2004

May it please the Court; I rise to present the petition of Samantha Rolle.

M’lord, with your leave I will dispense with the reading of the formal parts of this petition and say as follows:

Your petitioner is a young woman of grace and distinction. She is soft spoken but it is clear from the list of her achievements that she is a person of great determination and fortitude.  Your petitioner is the daughter of Antoinette Rolle who is a retired Secretary who worked for Burger King for many years and Samuel Rolle who is a technician at the Bahamas Telecommunications Company Ltd.  The family must be especially beaming with pride today knowing what their daughter has accomplished, and I offer my warmest congratulations to them.

M’lord your petitioner is a graduate of the Nassau Christian Academy.  She graduated in 1994.  From that school in Nassau she went on to the University of the Northern Caribbean and graduated in the year 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History, with a minor in English and communications.

She is a product of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in The Bahamas and the Caribbean.  This speaks well for the denomination, which has the reputation of producing some of the finest leaders of any gender in the country: well spoken, well-educated, strong individuals.  In this regard, she is no exception.

In 1998 when as Opposition Spokesman on Foreign Affairs I toured the NCU campus, she was amongst the students at the University.  She went on from NCU to the University of Buckingham, my alma mater for law, and there she obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree honours second class.  In 2003, she went to the Manchester Metropolitan University for the Bar Vocational Course, which she successfully completed earlier this year.  She is a member of Inner Temple and today your petitioner stands ready to become a full practicing member of the Bar.

She plans to enter general practice.  She will do her pupilage with the firm Peter Maynard & Co. Let me congratulate her on her accomplishments.

I wish to add words of congratulations to Jameko L. Greene who started out at my former law firm as a fourteen-year-old student from St. Augustine’s College, and look where he is today.  I know he will do well. And I also congratulate Mr. Algernon Allen and Justice Anita Allen on the accession of their daughter into the august profession.

M’lord if you will permit me a personal reminiscence.  This is the second petition that I am presenting today.  It reminds me of my fascination with the era when the first Black men came back to The Bahamas from the UK as lawyers.  Sir Lynden Pindling, Arthur Hanna, Paul Adderley, Orville Turnquest, Loftus Roker to name a few. The one thing they had in common, amongst other things, was that the late Sir Gerald Cash presented their petitions to the Bar.  I thought what a wonderful confluence that history tells. I once asked Sir Gerald how that came to be, and he told me “ In those days, I was the only”. How times have changed.

But, I wish to say, that having dispensed this duty today, I would not try to speak toward my own ambitions and chances but I hope that I will have served an equally useful function for those on whose behalf I do this work today and that the future of the persons here today will turn out to be equally as bright.

I once again encourage all attorneys to look toward a life in public service beyond the mere bounds of this profession.  In working for the common good, we build our country, a country that all of us are dedicated to protecting for all the future Bahamian lawyers.

I pray that your Lordship will accede to this petition. Unless I can further assist.