The University of the West Indies has announced the passing of professor emeritus A Ralph Carnegie at the age of 74. Carnegie was one of two professors of law when the Cave Hill Campus established its law faculty in 1970 and remained affiliated to this faculty in several capacities until his death on January 7. A release from the university said Carnegie's "monumental" contributions were not confined to the faculty or the campus or the university, they extended to regional and international jurisprudence, where he was well known for his work in contract, constitutional and international law.
"The University of the West Indies is devastated by the loss of one of the Caribbean's greatest legal minds," said vice-chancellor of the UWI, Prof E Nigel Harris. "Our sympathies go out to his family, to his widow Jeniphier and their children, Martin and David." Although he retired in 2006, Carnegie returned to Cave Hill to teach courses in the LL.M public law and the master's in international trade policy. Colleagues and students throughout the UWI community lamented that because his institutional knowledge was so phenomenal, and his personality so affable and accommodating, he would be terribly missed.
"Professor Carnegie was an institution builder par excellence, a reservoir of knowledge on the University and a brilliant legal mind...He will be extremely hard to replace," said university registrar William Iton.
Paying tribute as well to the keenness of his mind with regard to the internal workings of the University, St Augustine campus principal, Prof Clement Sankat said: "Professor Carnegie was unmatchable when it came to governance issues as it relates to the university...he was one of the Caribbean's leading legal minds and a willing resource up to his very last days. He will be greatly missed." Carnegie often acted as principal at Cave Hill, and was deputy principal for six years, and served as dean of the law faculty for five terms, as well as being executive director of one of its units, the Caribbean Law Institute Centre (an associate institution of Caricom).
He was a member of the Constitution Review Commissions of Grenada, and of Antigua and Barbuda. He was also similarly consulted by Barbados and St Kitts/Nevis. He served on the regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission, a Caricom technical working group reporting on Caricom governance and a Task Force on Economic Union for the Organisation of the Eastern Caribbean States. Carnegie was born in Jamaica in 1936, and graduated in history from the University College of the West Indies (UCWI), the forerunner of the UWI. As a Rhodes scholar, he studied at Jesus College at Oxford, earning first- class honours in jurisprudence before joining the Cave Hill campus as one of the founding professors at its law faculty, where he remained for 40 years.