Leo graduated with a LL.B. from the University of Buenos Aires and is a practising lawyer of the Buenos Aires Bar (admitted 1995) where recently joined the Estudio Durrieu law firm. Leo gained a LL.M. from Harvard Law School and a doctorate degree (D.Phil.) from the University of Oxford.
Dr. Leonardo J Raznovich – English practising barrister (called 2010) and academic whose work focuses on constitutional law, & International Human Rights.
Professional experience:
Leo’s work includes public interest litigation, academic research, and legislative reform. Based in the Cayman Islands, Leo is a legal consultant for Colours Caribbean, a local grass roots organisation, that works with LGBTQI+ people in British Overseas Territories to develop programs on inclusion and welfare. Leo has made a profound difference to the promotion and protection of the human rights of LGBTQI+ people in the British colonial territories and wider Caribbean. Leo has also been active in the International Bar Association being successfully appointed to be co-chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Council for 2024-2025. In the English bar, Leo has been appointed Treasurer of the Inner Temple LGBTQ+ Society for 2024 and internationally is a visiting research fellow of GAIN – Gender: Ambivalent InVisibilities – at the University of Vienna.
[2022] He formulated the strategy and established the team to pursue the Cayman Islands same-sex marriage case (successful at first instance, partly reversed on appeal: Day v Governor Cayman Islands [2022] UKPC 6). The case was ground-breaking since the Courts declared that same-sex couples were entitled to a legal framework functionally equivalent to marriage. [2022] Leo formulated the strategy for written submissions to the Privy Council in AG v Roderick Ferguson [2022] UKPC 5 on behalf of Colours Caribbean and the submissions to the European Court of Human Rights in Ferguson v the UK (Application no. 35043/22). He submitted written evidence to the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee on British Overseas Territories. Leo’s recommendations on same-sex marriage were adopted by the Committee in its report “Global Britain and the British Overseas Territories” (2019).
Leo successfully proposed to the FCDO, on behalf of Colours Caribbean, to drop the repeal of s.81 of the Cayman Islands’ Constitution for the better protection of minority rights.
He lobbied the Cayman Islands Government to fulfil its obligations to introduce the Civil Partnership Act 2020 using s.81 of the Constitution, and was consulted on its drafting, ensuring that the legal reforms achieved functional equivalence to marriage.
He assisted the Office of Lord Cashman CBE in drafting a Bill for same-sex marriages in British Overseas Territories, introduced to the House of Lords in July 2022.
Academic activity:
He has published widely and has held the positions of Director of International Law and Dispute Resolution and Principal Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University 2003-2013 (UK). Leo’s published academic work has been cited favourable by the Caribbean Court of Justice in Bisram v DPP [2022] [2022] CCJ 7 AJ (GY) and the UN Expert on SOGI in UN Report A/78/227 on the Protection against Violence and Discrimination based on SOGI. Leo co-ordinated a historical private audience with Vatican authorities to discuss criminalisation and violence against LGBTQI people (2019). Leo led a delegation of 50 prominent jurists, including Baroness Kennedy and former High Court Justice Michael Kirby. Leo co-founded/co-organised in Barbados (2022), the first LGBTQ+ data-driven roundtables throughout the Caribbean to discuss how to turn LGBTQ+ data into better policy interventions.
