The Honourable Mr. Justice Jacob Wit (Netherlands Antilles) was born on 24 December 1952 in Haarlemmermeer, The Netherlands. He graduated from the Pius X Lyceum (Amsterdam) in 1971, entering in that same year the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) of Amsterdam, from which he took the degree of Master of Laws with honours in 1977. After completing his military service (1976-1978) as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Dutch Navy, Mr. Justice Wit was admitted in March 1978 as a Judicial Trainee at the Studiecentrum Rechtspleging (Training and Study Centre for the Judiciary) in Zutphen, where he remained enrolled until 1984. During this period, he held the posts of Law Clerk in the Rotterdam District Court, Rotterdam, (1978-1980) and Deputy Prosecutor at the Amsterdam District Court (1980-1982) and worked as an attorney-at-law with the Law Firm of Van Doorne & Sjollema in Rotterdam.
Mr. Justice Wit was appointed by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as Deputy Judge of the Rotterdam District Court in January 1984, Judge of the Rotterdam District Court in March 1985 and Judge of the Joint Court of Justice of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba on 1 October 1988. This Court consists of two Courts of First Instance (Netherlands Antilles, Aruba) and a Court of Appeal. Resident in Curaçao since 1986, from then to the present, Mr. Justice Wit has presided over or sat in the Court of Appeal, but mainly presided in the Courts of First Instance over a wide range of cases, involving: civil law (contract, tort, property, succession), commercial and admiralty law, insurance, bankruptcy and (cross border) insolvency, company law and intellectual property, criminal law (serious crime, government corruption, international fraud, money laundering), military law, administrative law, constitutional law and international human rights law.
Over this period, he has acquired significant expertise in various posts within the Joint Court of Justice system: as Coordinating Judge, Court of First Instance, Curacao (1993-1996); Coordinator Judge of Instruction, Netherlands Antilles (1994-1997); Coordinating Judge for the Dutch Windward Islands of Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius and Saba (1997-2001) and from 2001 to the present as Senior Justice and Acting Chief Justice. The Honourable Mr. Justice Jacob Wit took the Oath of Office as a Judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) at The President's House Port of Spain, on Wednesday 1 June 2005. The oath was administered by His Excellency Professor George Maxwell Richards, President of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago.
Off the Bench, Mr. Justice Wit has served as Chairman of the Committee of Supervision of the Netherlands Antilles' Prisons and Houses of Detention (1987-1991); Chairman of the Board of Discipline for Medical Doctors (1992-1995); President of the Military Court of the Netherlands Antilles (1992-present); Chairman of the Judicial Working Groups on (a) Videoconferencing in Court and (b) Code of Ethics for the Judiciary (2003-present); and Chairman of the Committee of Supervision of the Security Service of Aruba (2004-present). He has also been a member of the National Committee On Revising the Codes of Criminal Procedure of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba (1987-1998); and Vice-President of the National Committee On Revising the Criminal Code of the Netherlands Antilles (2002-present).
The Honourable Judge has earned an international reputation as organiser of or presenter at important international legal conferences in various territories of the Dutch, French and Commonwealth Caribbean, one highlight of these activities being as Judicial panellist (together with the Hon. Burton Lifland, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York) in London in 2000 with a contribution on "Cross Border Insolvencies: A Judicial Perspective of the Cooperation and Coordination Between Civil and Common Law Jurisdictions".
Some of Mr. Justice Wit's assignments in recent times have brought him into close contact with Judiciaries of the English, French and Spanish speaking Caribbean. He has led judicial delegations to Antigua & Barbuda (1997) and Cuba (2002) for the purpose of obtaining evidence in high profile criminal cases in those territories. In his role as judicial educator, the Honourable Judge has been involved in conducting training workshops and seminars for judicial trainees and Judges from Suriname, Haiti, and the Commonwealth Caribbean. He speaks English, French, German, Dutch and Papiamento, with a passive knowledge of Spanish.
The Honourable Mr. Justice Wit is married to Sheila Wit-Thodé, a native of Curaçao. They have 4 children: Demseys, Taciana, Eurydice, and Nausicaä, all born in Curaçao |
