FOR TROY KELLMAN
SUPREME COURT
10TH DECEMBER 2004

May it please the Court; I rise to present the petition of Troy Levan Kellman.

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

In 1998, I was the Opposition’s spokesman on Foreign Affairs, Labour and Immigration.  And in that capacity, I toured the university campuses where Bahamians students went to school.  It was in that capacity that I visited the University of the Northern Caribbean in Mandeville, Jamaica.  It was there that I first met your petitioner.  It was clear that this was a well directed, aggressive young person, and that he had a sense of exactly where he was going to go.

Your petitioner is a graduate of the Seventh Day Adventist system of The Bahamas and the Caribbean.  That says much about him.  Because that religious denomination has produced and is producing some of the finest and most disciplined male leadership in the country.  In that regard, you petitioner is no exception.  We all expect great things from him.

Your petitioner is a 1998 graduate of the University of the Northern Caribbean in history and social studies.  He was teacher in Abaco for two years following his graduation.

It was then my honour to work with him and to meet him again when he decided that teaching was not his ultimate career choice and he wanted to become lawyer.  He joined my former firm Gwendolyn House for a year before leaving for the University of Buckingham in 2001.  He obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree from that university, also my alma mater in 2003, with a second-class honours degree.  He attended the Inns of Court School of Law, City University in London to prepare for the Bar and was successful earlier this year.  He is a member of the Inner Temple.

Your petitioner is the son of proud parents Peter Bain and Henrietta Bain (nee Kellman). I wish to be amongst the first to congratulate them.

The reason for the tour in 1998 M’Lord was the acknowledgment of something, which is obvious.  University graduates are bound to make up the leadership class of the country. Anyone who aspires to leadership in the country has to know the university graduates, and more particularly those who are in medicine and law because that is the pool from which most of the politicians come.

The Bar Rules recognize the special role of lawyers in performing public service, which is what service in the House of Assembly, the Senate, as Judges in the Courts and in the wider civic life of the country is all about.  I trust that he will have a look at that rule in the Bar Rules, which seeks to provide guidance in the conduct of the affairs of attorneys in public life. There is no new ground broken there but I think the reminder is especially appropriate, given the proud legacy of those who are lawyers, and the need to encourage more people to enter into the public life.

Your petitioner is one to whom much has been given, and from whom much is expected.  I think that he knows that.  He has said that he is keenly interested in the criminal law.  Given the dearth of persons interested in that area, that is a good sign of things to come.

And so I count it a privilege to be able to represent your petitioner Troy Levan Kellman and humbly ask your Lordship to accede to his petition.

Unless, I can further assist.