Bernice Lake

Dame Bernice Lake, who lived from 1932 or 1933 to September 10, 2011, was an Anguillan-born jurist and legal scholar whose career spanned more than forty years. Born in Anguilla and educated in St. Kitts and at the University College of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, she first worked as a diplomat for the West Indies Federation's foreign service until it collapsed in 1962, then entered law school at the Faculty of Laws of University College London, earning her honours degree in law in 1967. Admitted to the bar in St. Kitts that same year, she became a prominent jurist specializing in human rights and constitutional law, practicing from her chambers Lake and Kentish in Antigua. She was the chief architect of the 1975 Constitution of Anguilla and served on the committee that framed the 1981 Constitution of Antigua and Barbuda. In 1985 she became the first woman from the Eastern Caribbean, and the first graduate of the University of the West Indies, to be appointed Queen's Counsel. She was knighted by the government of Antigua and Barbuda in 2004 for her contributions to Antiguan and Caribbean law, and received an honorary doctorate in law from the University of the West Indies in 2007.