The excellent post from Nanny of the Windward Maroons on women leaders in Jamaica, coupled with Eleanor Roosevelt's comment on same, touched off a search for more information about the women who serve on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (above).Found precious little: Court-supplied biographies of Judges Rhadys Abreu Blondet, Dominican Republic (top row, 2d from right), Margarette May Macaulay, Jamaica (top row, 2d from left), and Cecilia Medina Quiroga, Chile (front row, left) are sparse, and devoid of individual photos.
A Westlaw search revealed almost nothing on the session at which the Court's 7-member bench included, for the 1st time, 3 women: "Mujeres aumentan presencia en Corte Interamericana," a January 29, 2007, Associated Press-Spanish dispatch, appears not to have been picked up by any newspaper. A bit more searching turned up a bit more information on 2 of the 3: Macaulay, a Sierra Leone-born and England-educated human rights lawyer, and Medina, a human rights law professor who's served on the U.N. Human Rights Committee and is the Court's Vice President. No luck with Abreu.
Such Web-absence helps make invisible the role that law plays in the international system, not to mention the role that women play within the international legal system. Here's 1 way to raise the public profiles of both, courtesy of Legal History Blog: contribute to Wikipedia, a Web-ubiquitous source of information that's reportedly eager to augment its international law offerings. (As it stands, there's a Wiki entry on the Inter-American Court, plus a blurb on Medina, but nothing on the Court's other 2 women.)
A research project for all those I/L students soon to return to campus, perhaps?
