Dame Bernice Lake QC (1932/3–2011), Human Rights and Constitutional Lawyer

Biography

The daughter of George and Ellen Augusta Lake, Bernice Lake received her high school education at St Kitts, graduated with a degree in history from the University College of the West Indies at Jamaica, and then returned to St Kitts to teach. Lake was subsequently recruited into the diplomatic service of the Federation of the West Indies. 

Lake began her study of law at University College London in 1964, where she was active in the anti-apartheid campaign, and from where she graduated in 1967 with an LLB and was admitted to Middle Temple. That year Lake was called to the Bar at St Kitts, before establishing a practice at Anguilla in 1971, which became the firm of Lake and Kentish in 1986, a partnership with Joyce A. Kentish. 

Lake was the chief framer of the Constitution of Anguilla of 1975, and a member of the committee which framed the Constitution of Antigua and Barbuda of 1981. Lake also established the Justice Corps, which provided free legal advice to the people of Anguilla, Antigua, and St Kitts and Nevis.

In 1985 Lake became the first Eastern Caribbean woman to be made Queen’s Counsel, and in 2004 was made a Dame by the Government of Antigua and Barbuda, in recognition of her contribution to the legal profession, her advocacy for women’s rights, and for her support for civil and political rights. In July 2011 Lake was honoured by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, where Justice Louise Blenman praised Lake ‘as one of the finest minds in the entire Caribbean … Dame Bernice is known for her scholarship … and for her very high ethical standards. She has an impenetrable integrity and strength of conviction that is unparalleled’. (Antigua Observer, 12 September 2011)

Sources

• ‘Dame Bernice Dies’, Antigua Observer, 12 September 2011
• ‘Anguilla has lost a legal luminary and stalwart’, Anguilla Bar Association, 16 September 2011
• Adrian Fraser, ‘An Appreciation of Dame Bernice Lake’, Searchlight, 23 September 2011
• ‘Two State Solution: A Tribute to the Passing of Dame Bernice Lake, Q.C.’, The Anguillian, 2 October 2011