The Report includes statistics showing that in 2011 only 5.1% of judges were Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and just 22.3% were women. The Committee stressed that diversity incorporates a number of other elements including disability, sexual orientation, legal profession and social background and rejected any notion that those from under-represented groups are less worthy candidates or that a more diverse judiciary would undermine the quality of our judges.

The Committee set out a number of recommendations to improve diversity. These include:

• The Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice should have a duty to encourage diversity amongst the judiciary as the Judicial Appointments Committee (JAC) does currently.
• While appointment based on merit is vital and should continue, the Committee supports the application of section 159 of the Equalities Act 2010 to judicial appointments. This would allow the desire to encourage diversity to be a relevant factor where two candidates are found to be of equal merit.
• Opportunities for flexible working and the taking of career breaks within the judiciary should be made more widely available to encourage applications from women and others with caring responsibilities.
• There needs to be a greater commitment on the part of the Government, the judiciary and the legal professions to encourage applications for the judiciary from lawyers other than barristers. Being a good barrister is not necessarily the same thing as being a good judge.
• While the Committee does not currently support the introduction of targets for the number of BAME and women judges, it says this should be looked at again in five years if significant progress has not been made.

Click here to view a video of Baroness Jay, Chairman of the Committee, discussing the report.

An abandoned home near Chicago’s South Side, was the unlikely hiding place for an important piece of black history — the papers of Richard Theodore Greener, Harvard’s first African-American alumnus.

Greener’s 1870 Harvard diploma, his law license, photos and papers connected to his diplomatic role in Russia and his friendship with President Ulysses S. Grant were discovered by contractors hired to clear the home before its demolition in 2009, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Historians were reportedly shocked to learn that the documents had survived, since they were thought to have been lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, where Greener was visiting at the time.

Greener was born on January 30, 1844, and passed away in 1922. He is said to have been born to the son of a slave in Philadelphia in 1844, and to have left school at 14 to become a porter at a Boston hotel.  Richard T. Greener was the first black to enter the College and to complete the undergraduate curriculum with an A.B. in 1870. He was not, however, the first black to be admitted, a distinction belonging to Beverly Garnett Williams, in 1847. Williams died just before the academic year began and thus never entered the College.

Greener received a LL.B. degree at the University of South Carolina’s Law School in 1876, graduating with honors. He was admitted to the Supreme Court of South Carolina in 1877 and the bar of the District of Columbia the next year. In 1882, he received a LL.D. conferred by Monrovia College, Liberia, Africa, and in 1907 was honored with another LL.D. conferred by Howard University. In 1879, Greener was appointed Dean of Howard University’s Law Department and in 1881, opened a private law practice in Washington. During Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt’s administrations, Greener was a prominent figure in national and international affairs. In 1898, he was appointed United Consul to Bombay India, and then transferred to Vladivostok, Russia, becoming the first American to hold this post.

Click here to read entire story on this discovery of his papers in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Despite that restriction, until June 2010, it was possible and legal to engage in cross-border securities swaps to repatriate funds.  In short, a party could swap Venezuela-Bolivar denominated securities, such as Venezuelan government debt bonds (DPN bonds), for foreign currency denominated securities held abroad and subsequently liquidated these latter securities for foreign currency abroad.

Amendments to the Foreign Exchange Crimes Act enacted in May 2010 prohibited this swap mechanism.  The amendments characterized securities denominated in foreign currency as forms of foreign currency.  The law made straight swaps of Bolivars for U.S. currency or other foreign currency denominated securities unauthorized transfers of “foreign currency.”

A technique now used by multinational to obtain foreign currency and repatriate funds back the United States or other jurisdictions is to buy gold (or some other commodity) abroad and pay for it with Venezuelan securities denominated in Bolivars, namely DPNs.  Such a transaction apparently does not constitute a breach of the country’s foreign exchange system.  In sum, gold or securities denominated in Bolivars are not included in the definition of “foreign exchange” in the country’s Foreign Exchange Crimes Act.

Throughout the hour long documentary, Dr. Gates suggested that Cuba would have been a country of racial equality had it not been for the intervention of the U.S. during its war of independence from Spain.  Along with attempting to include Cuba under its sphere of influence, the U.S. exported its ideas of racial hierarchy and the suppression of blacks.  Former slaves who had fought in the war of independence with Spain quickly found themselves considered to be second class citizens though there were no official segregation laws.

Gates spends a lot of time affirming that everything of African origin was repressed.  Even Fulgencio Batista, the dictator and military leader before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution and who was himself a mulatto, did not see fit to uplift blacks.  It was then left for Fidel Castro to attempt to create the long needed change.

Click here to watch PBS video.

This year marked the 15th anniversary of CABL.  As Alleyne notes, in the past 15 years, CABL has made great strides in becoming a strong and vibrant association representing the diverse interests of the black community in Canada but there are many challenges.  According to Alleyne, some of the challenges for the near term include strengthening CABL’s chapters outside of Ontario and ensuring that black law students have a good chance to find articles and be called to the bar.

Alleyne notes that, in the past 20 years, “Bay Street” firms have become more diverse, although they have a very long way to go towards becoming fully representative of the community.  For example, in his Toronto office there are three black partners that are three of the only 18 black partners that the CABL was aware of last year when it gathered to toast the achievements of the black partners on Bay Street.  According to Alleyne, of the hundreds of partners of the firms represented at that event, 18 is a small number but placed in the perspective that, in the early 1990s, there may have only been two or three black partners on Bay Street, that there has been improvement.

The CABL, formed in March 1996, is a national Canadian network of law professionals and individuals committed to reinvesting in the community.  CABL’s continuing goal is to bring together law professionals and other interested members of the community from across Canada to cultivate and maintain the association of black legal professionals in Canada.

Click here to read the full article in Sway.

Each year, on December 5, the morning before the feast of St. Nicholas, Dutch children all over the country wake up excited for gifts and candy, while thousands of adults go to their mirrors to paint their faces black and their lips red. Once in their Zwarte Piet costumes, they fill central Amsterdam and small village streets, ushering in the arrival of Sinterklaas who, according to local tradition, rides a flying white horse.

Zwarte Piet—or his immediate ancestor—was introduced in 1845 in the story “Saint Nicholas and his Servant,” written by an Amsterdam schoolteacher named Jan Schenkman. In the story, Sinterklaas comes from Spain by steamship bringing with him a black helper of African origin. The book was wildly popular and with it began the inclusion of Santa’s helper in Dutch Christmas festivities.  A century later he was given the name Piet.

During recent years the role of Zwarte Pieten has become part of a recurring debate in the Netherlands.  Foreign tourists, particularly Americans, often experience culture shock when encountering the Zwarte Pieten holiday revelers blackening their faces, wearing afro wigs, gold jewelry and bright red lipstick and walking the streets throwing candy to passersby.

Since the last decade of the 20th century there have been several attempts to introduce a new kind of Zwarte Piet to the Dutch population, where the Zwarte Pieten replaced their traditional black make-up with all sorts of colors. In 2006 the NPS (Dutch Program Foundation) as an experiment replaced the black Pieten by rainbow-colored Pieten, but in 2007 reverted to the traditional all-black Pieten.

The largest Sinterklaas celebration in Western Canada within the Dutch-Canadian community, slated for 3 December 2011 in New Westminster, British Columbia, was cancelled for the first time since its inception in 1985 after clashes of opinion surrounding Zwarte Piet. Rather than leaving out Zwarte Piet from the celebration, the organizers decided to cancel the entire public festivity.

Click here to read full article on Slate, “In Holland, Santa Doesn’t Have Helpers. He Has Slaves.”

Click here to read full article on The Root, “A Very Racist Christmas?”

Click here to read full article on The Record, “New Westminster Sinterklaas Festival Cancelled”

Chair of the BSN’s City Group since 2008, Mastin also co-runs Linklaters’ internal diversity initiative – the Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) Network – that aims to encourage the recruitment, ­retention and promotion of such people at all levels within the firm. Linklaters recently teamed up with the BSN City Group and a leading banking client to hold a panel event on global capital ­markets specifically designed for black City lawyers.

In her ­experiences as a black lawyer it is clear that Mastin sees the value of ­internal and external networks that support diversity. Mastin believes that law firms should be as diverse as their client base.

Asked how the BSN engages and ­promotion of recruitment with City firms to promote the interests, its members, Mastin ­outlines a number of agendas the organisation is pursuing.

“The BSN Diversity League Table [DLT] is particularly instrumental in this regard, in that it provides a comprehensive analysis of the demographics of many ­leading law firms and chambers,” she explains. “Through this ­publication law firms, including ­Linklaters, are encouraged to share best practice and are able to gauge their progress in the area of recruitment of BAME lawyers.”

This results, ­published in November, show that 16 per cent of all DLT year’s trainees are from ethnic minority backgrounds, ­representing a year-on-year increase since 2007. The proportion of ethnic minority associates increased from 10 per cent to 11 per cent over the same period, while the figure for partners rose slightly to 5 per cent.  In total, 44 firms volunteered to participate in the survey. This figure includes 13 international firms, 26 UK top 100 firms and six of the City’s finest.

Despite the slow trickle of those from BAME backgrounds over the years, Mastin remains positive but stresses that more still needs to be done.

Click here to read full article on The Lawyer.

The day is marked on the anniversary of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares (1655-1695), the last leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares, a fugitive community of escaped slaves and others in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694. It was located in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas.  The day has special meaning for those Brazilians of African descent who honor Zumbi as a hero, freedom fighter, and symbol of freedom. Zumbi has become a hero of the twentieth-century Afro-Brazilian political movement, as well as a national hero in Brazil.

On November 20, members of the organization “Black Movement” (the largest of its kind in the country) organize educational and fun events involving mainly children of African descent. Their focus during these events is to dissolve the perception of Africans’ inferiority in society. Other “hot topics” in the black community during the Day of Black Awareness are the assimilation of African-Brazilian laborers with Caucasian-Brazilian and other laborers, ethnic identity, and black pride.

Black Awareness Day has been celebrated since the 1960s and has only amplified its events in the last few years.  The 13th of May is now a holiday (Brazilian Abolishment of Slavery).

Clearly, more can be accomplished.  Franchised businesses on the continent could create and join a Pan-African Franchise Association to serve as a resource center for the African franchise industry and practitioners through the continent to foster an understanding of franchise “best practices.”

An important function of the association could be to arbitrate disputes between franchisor and franchisees.  This would be particularly important in those African countries where the judicial system is not particularly efficient.  These associations could also,  in effect, be self-regulatory bodies of the franchise sector.  Among other things, they could even facilitate grow in the industry by organizing franchise shows and/or meetings between prospective master franchisees and international franchisors, manage the qualification process of interested franchisors, organize international trade missions and seminars on topics of interest.

The Namibian Supreme Court recently ruled that conditions imposed by its nation’s antitrust regulator on Walmart’s takeover of assets in that country must be reviewed by the Namibian trade minister.  It is a move that could deal a blow to the R16.5bn (US$2.1 billion) deal.  The ruling gives Trade and Industry Minister Hage Geingob a final say over whether conditions attached to the deal by the Namibian Competition Commission are adequate.

Under Namibian competition law, Geingob’s review of the conditions could lead to the deal being overturned or having conditions amended and added.

The Namibian Competition Commission approved the deal earlier this year, on condition it does not lead to job cuts and Walmart sells stakes to historically disadvantaged communities, among others.

While Walmart welcomed the ruling, it said any new conditions imposed by the trade minister would be open to a legal challenge.

Click here to read article in Fin24 on deal.