Country-wide policy
Jamaican law is current page by page, and every page says which
Most countries freeze a revised edition at a date and print the date on the cover. Jamaica does not have an edition in that sense. The Revised Laws of Jamaica are loose-leaf: the Minister authorises the inclusion of individual pages by order published in the Gazette, each page carries a note of the order that authorised it, and the pages so authorised are from that date deemed to be the sole and proper Statute Book of Jamaica for the laws they contain. So the cut-off is not a property of an Act, it is a property of a page: the foot of every page of every statute on the law portal says which Legal Notice put it there. Open the Law Revision Act itself and you will find pages authorised by L.N. 480 of 1973 sitting next to pages authorised by L.N. 92c of 2012. What you can read off a Jamaican statute is therefore precise in a way nothing else in the region is, and the honest cut-off for a whole Chapter is the newest Legal Notice printed anywhere in it.
Topics it changes
- Visiting as a tourist
- Residency through work
- Residency under a regional treaty
- Becoming a citizen
- When you become a tax resident
- Access to healthcare
- Driving and licence exchange
- Bringing your belongings
What it requires
- Read the foot of the page a provision is printed on, not the title of the Act
- Treat a page as current only up to the Legal Notice named on it
- Expect commencement provisions to be missing: the Commissioners may omit them, and do
At a glance
- Newest page in the Immigration Restriction (Commonwealth Citizens) Act
- 2010
Authorised by Legal Notice 11 of that year
- Newest page in the Aliens Act
- 2004
Authorised by Legal Notice 87 of that year
- Newest page in the Jamaican Nationality Act
- 2001
Authorised by Legal Notice 3 of that year
- Newest page in the Free Movement of Skilled Persons Act
- 2016
Authorised by Legal Notice 128 of that year, three years after the Act was last amended
- Newest page in the Establishment Act
- 2008
Authorised by Legal Notice 80a of that year
- Newest page in the Road Traffic Act
- 2006
Authorised by Legal Notice 180a of that year, twelve years before the replacement Act was passed
- Oath of allegiance in the Nationality Act
- Still sworn to Queen Elizabeth II
On a page authorised by L.N. 5 of 1995, which is exactly what the mechanism predicts
What the law says
«in the order or orders by which their inclusion was
authorized, be in all courts and for all purposes whatsu-
ever deemed to be and shall be the sole and proper Statute
Book of Jamaica in respect of the laws contained therein,
other than Commonwealth laws»The authenticity provision. whatsu-ever is the publisher's line break; the recognition keeps the hyphen.
«Provided that nothing in this section shall affect the
operation of any provision in a law (in relation to which
pages have not been included in the Revised Laws) which
repeals or amends any law for the time being contained
in the Revised Laws, or modifies the construction or
application of any provision of any such law.»The pages are authentic for what they contain; an amending Act not yet paged into them still operates.
«(a) as far as practicable every Law or Act in force,»This instrument is published only as an image. The wording above was read off that picture and checked by eye, so it did not pass the machine verbatim check the other quotations passed. Treat it as accurate but re-read the scan before relying on it.
«(v) all enactments prescribing the date when,»Continues: or the manner in which, any law or part of any law is to come into force, where such omission can, in the opinion of the Commissioners, conveniently be made. This is why commencement is so hard to establish from a Jamaican Chapter.
«of any law is to come into force, where»This instrument is published only as an image. The wording above was read off that picture and checked by eye, so it did not pass the machine verbatim check the other quotations passed. Treat it as accurate but re-read the scan before relying on it.
«(3) I n this Act “prescribed year” means the year
1969 or any other year which the Minister may prescribe
in substitution therefor.»I n is the publisher's recognition of In.
Practical notes
The Commissioners' power to omit commencement provisions is not a drafting accident; it is in the Act, and it is the reason a Jamaican Chapter will often tell you what the law says and not when it started saying it.
The law portal's catalogue entry for each statute also gives an operational date and a last amendment date. Those two are not cut-offs and sometimes contradict the pages: the Free Movement of Skilled Persons Act is catalogued as last amended in 2004 and its pages were authorised in 2016, after an amending Act of 2013 that the catalogue does not mention.