Sir Frederik Gordon Roy Ward OBE is a retired British judge who has served in various countries of the Commonwealth.
He was educated in England, obtaining a BSc in botany, zoology and geology, and then taught biology in Northern Ireland.
Ward studied law and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple and practiced from chambers in London for 12 years. [1]
In 1979 he went to the South Pacific, where he first worked in Fiji for six and a half years. He then served as a judge on the Court of Appeal of Solomon Islands where, from circa 1988 to 1992, he was Chief Justice. [2] He then moved to Tonga to become Chief Justice of Tonga and a judge of the Supreme Court of Tonga. [3] In 1995 he moved to serve as a judge in Cyprus before returning in 1998 to serve a second term as Chief Justice of Tonga, resigning in 2004 in protest at attempts to ban the Times of Tonga newspaper, a paper unsympathetic to the government, a move which he considered to be unconstitutional.
On leaving this post he took up a new position as the President of the Appeal Court of Fiji. [4] In 2007, following the December 2006 military coup, Ward and five other judges resigned as judges of the courts of Fiji. [5]
He was the Chief Justice of the Turks and Caicos Islands from 2008 to 2012 and was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to the judiciary in the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Commonwealth. [6]
Ward was the Chief Justice of the High Court of Tuvalu from 2001 to 2016. [3] [4] In May 2013 the Chief Justice ruled on the application of the Tuvaluan Opposition regarding the calling of a by-election for the vacant seat in Nukufetau, [7] which led to the 2013 Nukufetau by-election. [8] The Chief Justice was forced to conduct the legal proceedings by email as a consequence of being unable to travel from New Zealand to Tuvalu via Fiji as the Fijian regime refused to provide Sir Gordon Ward with a visa that allowed him to travel from New Zealand to Fiji and then to transit to Tuvalu. [9] [4] [10] [11]
In 2019 he was appointed as acting Chief Justice of Tuvalu, [12] pending the appeal by the Hon Charles Sweeney QC against the termination of his appointment by a resolution of the Parliament. [12]
Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands, northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.
The politics of Tuvalu takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic monarchy, whereby the monarch is the head of state, represented by the governor-general, while the prime minister is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government.
The chief justice is the Republic of Fiji's highest judicial officer. The office and its responsibilities are set out in Chapter 5 of the 2013 Constitution of Fiji. The chief justice is appointed by the president on the advice of the prime minister.
The British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) was a colonial entity created in 1877 for the administration of a series of Pacific islands in Oceania under a single representative of the British Crown, styled the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. Except for Fiji and the Solomon Islands, most of these colonial possessions were relatively minor.
The Court of Appeal of Fiji is one of three courts that were established by Chapter 9 of the 1997 Constitution, the others being the High Court and the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeal was a new institution established when the 1997 Constitution came into effect; the other two courts predated it. The Constitution authorizes the Court of Appeal "to hear and determine appeals" from all High Court judgements. Occasionally, other powers may be assigned to this court by law.
Apisai Ielemia was a Tuvaluan politician. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Tuvalu from 2006 to 2010, and also held the role as Foreign Minister. He was returned as a member of parliament in the 2010 Tuvaluan general election. He was re-elected to parliament in the 2015 Tuvaluan general election. On 5 October 2016 Chief Justice Sweeney of the High Court of Tuvalu declared that Ielemia’s parliamentary seat was vacant as he was not qualified to be a member of parliament, as the consequence of the short time the opposition MP served time in jail following his conviction on 6 May 2016 in the Magistrate’s Court of charges of abuse of office during the final year of his term as prime minister. The abuse of office charges related to payments deposited into a National Bank of Tuvalu personal account. The 5 October 2016 decision of the Chief Justice was controversial as it appeared to contradict the June 2016 decision of Justice Norman Franzi of the High Court of Tuvalu that had quashed Ielemia’s conviction and acquitted him of the abuse of office charges. The appeal to the High Court held that the conviction was "manifestly unsafe," with the court quashing the 12-month jail term.
Anthony Harold Cumberland Thomas Gates was the chief justice of Fiji from 2008 to 2019.
Michael Dishington Scott was Chief Justice of Tonga.
Anthony David Ford was a New Zealand lawyer and jurist. He served as a judge of the Employment Court of New Zealand and Chief Justice of the Kingdom of Tonga.
The Court of Appeal of Tonga is the supreme court in Tonga for all criminal and most civil matters. It hears criminal and civil appeals from the Supreme Court and also hears appeals from the Land Court.
A by-election was held in the Nukufetau constituency in Tuvalu on 28 June 2013. It followed the death of MP and Minister for Finance Lotoala Metia, who died suddenly on 21 December 2012.
The judiciary of Solomon Islands is a branch of the Government of Solomon Islands that interprets and applies the laws of Solomon Islands, to ensure equal justice under law, and to provide a mechanism for dispute resolution. The legal system is derived from chapter VII, part II of the Constitution, adopted when the country became independent from the United Kingdom in 1978. The Constitution provided for the creation of a High Court, with original jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases, and a Court of Appeal. It also provided for the possibility of "subordinate courts", with no further specification (art.84).
The British Overseas Territories maintain their own entry requirements different from the visa policy of the United Kingdom. As a general rule, British citizens do not have automatic right of abode in these territories.
The High Court of Tuvalu is the superior court of Tuvalu. It has unlimited original jurisdiction to determine the Law of Tuvalu and hears appeals from the lower courts.
The Constitution of Tuvalu states that it is “the supreme law of Tuvalu” and that “all other laws shall be interpreted and applied subject to this Constitution”; it sets out the Principles of the Bill of Rights and the Protection of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
The Falekaupule on each of the Islands of Tuvalu is the traditional assembly of elders or te sina o fenua. Under the Falekaupule Act (1997), the powers and functions of the Falekaupule are now shared with the Kaupule on each island, which is the executive arm of the Falekaupule, whose members are elected. The Kaupule has an elected president - pule o kaupule; an appointed treasurer - ofisa ten tupe; and is managed by a committee appointed by the Kaupule.
Fiji–Tuvalu relations are diplomatic and other relations between Fiji and Tuvalu.
The Chief Justice of the High Commissioner's Court, more commonly known as the Chief Judicial Commissioner for the Western Pacific, was the chief judicial officer throughout the British Western Pacific Territories from 1877 through 1976. This was a supra-colonial entity established by the Western Pacific Orders-in-Council 1877, and by the Pacific Order-in-Council 1893. Headed by a High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, who was also ex officio the Governor of Fiji, until the end of 1952, it included numerous islands, mostly small, throughout Oceania. Composition varied over time, but Fiji (1877–1952) and the Solomon Islands (1893–1976) were its most durable members.