'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'How many women would be enough?' Sawyer asked.
'Nine,' Ginsburg replied with a smile. 'There've been nine men there for a long time, right? So why not nine women?'

-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (center) (prior IntLawGrrls posts), in conversation with ABC TV News' Diane Sawyer (left). (Hat tip to Professor Sally Kenney, Executive Director, Newcomb College Institute and Newcomb College Endowed Chair, Tulane University, via IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Fionnuala Ní Aoláin) The conversation, video of which is available here, took place last October during a California conference on women. Also on the dais was the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor (above, right), who retired in 2005 from her post as the 1st woman Justice. Today, of course, there are 3 -- in addition to Ginsburg, newcomer Justices Sonia Sotomayor (prior posts) and Elena Kagan (prior posts). Of this development, O'Connor said:

'I've got to tell you, I went to the Supreme Court recently... I sat in on an argument, and I looked up at the bench on which I sat for 25 years, and what did I see? I saw on the far right, a woman. On the far left side, a woman. And here in the middle, a woman. And it was dazzling.'

Do women judges matter?

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Nienke Grossman, who contributes this guest post) Thank you to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to blog about my most recent article: “Sex on the Bench: Do Women Judges Matter to the Legitimacy of International Courts?” I will also be discussing this article at the International Legal Theory Interest Group session from 3 to 4:30 p.m. this Friday, March 25, in Salon IIIB of the Ritz Carlton in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts on the meeting are available here.) For the most part, women participate in meager numbers on the world’s most important international courts. In its sixty-five year history, only three permanent women judges have ever served on the International Court of Justice. Two of them sit on the bench today. The European Court of Justice had only 15% permanent female judges in May 2010. Women were appointed to World Trade Organization panels only 17% of the time in 2009, although women constituted 43% of the appellate body in mid-2010, up from only 19% historically. At the same time, women accounted for 29% of the judges on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and only one woman had ever served as an ad hoc judge. No women sit on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. The International Criminal Court is the only court, of eleven surveyed in my article, in which women outnumbered men on the bench. As is frequently noted, international courts are playing a growing role in both deciding international disputes and defining the content of international law. And their increasing importance has led to many serious questions about their legitimacy. Because international courts generally lack enforcement powers and guaranteed funds, without legitimacy – defined as justified authority – states and others are less likely to cooperate and comply with their judgments. Among the factors that may impact a court’s legitimacy is the ratio of the sexes, or “sex representation,” on the bench. My article suggests sex representation matters to legitimacy in at least three ways: ► First, when men and women approach the law or facts differently, both are necessary for impartiality, an important prerequisite of legitimate adjudication. Because of the low numbers of women judges on international courts, empirical studies of a gender effect are rare. But one study of sentencing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, by Dr. Kimi Lynn King and Megan Greening, shows that female judges gave weightier sentences to defendants who assaulted women, while male judges did the same for male victims. Further, many female international court judges, including frequent IntLawGrrls guest Judge Patricia M. Wald, suggest their life experiences as women make a difference in at least some cases. ► Second, sex representation is important to legitimacy even if men and women are not inherently different because at least some constituencies seem to believe they are nonetheless. For example, as demonstrated in my forthcoming International Criminal Law Review piece, co-sponsored by IntLawGrrls, as part of its "Women and International Criminal Law" project, some non-government organizations and states sought to include female judges on post-World War II international criminal tribunals because they thought women would alter the development of facts and the direction of the law. Unisex courts would lack justified authority for them. Similarly, when a group has suffered discrimination or exclusion, it is likely to question the authority of an institution that continues to exclude it. Women’s participation in low numbers is not limited to international courts; it extends to the prestigious International Law Commission, the Inter-American Juridical Committee, and several of the United Nations treaty bodies. For many, these institutions (and international law) will face legitimacy troubles until they more accurately reflect the ratio of the sexes. ► Finally, women judges matter for reasons of democratic legitimacy. Imagine a world court with only jurists from one nation. Even if it possessed the most credentialed of benches, such a court would lack justified authority. Legitimate adjudication requires both impartial judges and judges with some link to the constituencies their rulings impact. Just as geographic diversity – a virtually ubiquitous requirement in international court statutes – strengthens international courts’ legitimacy, so too does sex representation. Consequently, perhaps the strongest argument for sex representation is that women make up almost half the world's population, and thus, an important constituency of international courts. In fact, states have already taken steps toward sex representation in the statutes of the International Criminal Court, the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights, and for ad litem judges on the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda." Similarly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolved to reject unisex lists of candidates to the European Court of Human Rights. The argument for sex representation is all the more compelling when female Presidents, Supreme Court Judges, and Ministers of Justice have served in a wide range of countries. Surely qualified candidates for international judgeships can be found in countries where women achieve so much. More international courts make decisions that affect our lives today than ever before. They define the scope of our human rights and decide who will be held accountable for what kind of international crimes. They determine which communities will benefit from the exploitation of oil in disputed parts of the ocean, and whether environmental harm has taken place, what reparations must be paid and to whom. They play an integral role in defining fair trade practices and whether natural resources belong to the people within a state or to multinational corporations. This article seeks to shine light on the paucity of women judges participating in these vital decisions and in defining the content of international law today. It argues that we must pay more attention to sex representation if we wish to strengthen the legitimacy of these increasingly important institutions.

Major Staff Turnover Anticipated at the ICC

The ICC is poised to experience a major turnover in its professional staff in 2012. These upcoming elections and appointments will constitute the most significant and dramatic changes in the ICC's leadership corps since the inaugural elections in 2003.
On the judicial side: the terms of six of the Court's 18 judges (depicted above) will expire next year. (The ICC Statute staggered the terms of office of the first batch of judges so that one third would serve 9 year terms. It is this group of judges whose terms are now ending.) The nomination period for the open positions shall run from June 13 to September 2, 2011. Candidates will be elected at the tenth session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) (December 12-21, 2011) to be held at United Nations Headquarters. The Court also needs a new President and new Vice Presidents. This radical overhaul of the bench will come just as the first trials before the Court are coming to a close and the ad hoc tribunals are shutting their doors.
The Judicial Division is composed of 18 judges in three divisions. The Pre-Trial Division is composed of 6 judges. Some of the responsibilities of the Division are carried out by two Pre-Trial Chambers of 3 judges each or by a single judge. As the name implies, the Pre-Trial Division carries out a number of functions prior to the initiation of trial:

• authorizing the prosecutor's proprio motu investigation,
• ruling on admissibility challenges, including on complementarity and gravity grounds,
• reviewing decisions by the prosecutor not to proceed in the event of the referral of a situation,
• upholding the rights of the accused and protecting victims and witnesses in the investigative phase,
• authorizing investigations on the territories of states parties,
• issuing warrants for arrest,
• confirming the charges against an accused, and
• (eventually) serving as a filter to charges of aggression (if the ASP decides to activate the aggression amendments in 2017).

The Trial Division, composed of 8 judges with criminal law experience, is charged with conducting fair and expeditious trials to determine the individual responsibility, vel non, of the accused and to award any reparations due to the victims. Finally, the Appeals Division, consisting of the President of the Court and four other judges, is responsible for adjudicating any appeals emerging from the Pre-Trial Division or the Trial Division.
Among those ICC judges whose terms are ending are three women:
Fatoumata Dembélé Diarra of Mali, the First Vice President of the Court and a member of the Trial Division (above right), Elizabeth Odio Benito of Costa Rica and a member of the Trial Division (immediate right), and Sylvia Steiner of Brazil, who is a member of the Pre-Trial Division (above left).
The current prosecutor's term ends in June 2012, and the ASP has established a representative search committee to find his replacement pursuant to the same schedule as the judicial elections. The Committee is being coordinated by H.R.H. Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations. The Committee hopes to have a short list of candidates by the end of this summer.
As they consider their nominations, the ASP will do well to recall the qualifications of judges and the prosecutor, which are set forth in part in Articles 36 and 42 of the ICC Statute, respectively. In particular, Article 36(8)(a) directs the ASP to in the selection of judges, to

take into account the need, within the membership of the Court, for: ... (iii) A fair representation of female and male judges.

Not surprisingly, NGOs are calling for a merits-based set of nominations rather than politicized vote-trading. To this end, the Coalition for an ICC has created a high-level expert panel to assess the candidates put forward by States Parties. See here for more on this campaign. (Diane's prior post on the CICC panel convened to vet judicial candidates is here.)
The ASP is going to experience an overhaul as well, with the election of new members of the Bureau (the executive committee of the ASP), a new President, and 6 new members for the Committee of Budget and Finance. (Ambassador Simona Mirela Miculescu (left), Permanent Representative of Romania to the United Nations, recently assumed the position of Vice-President of the Assembly).
The crime of aggression will likely become operational during the terms of office of this group. (The ASP can make a decision as early as 2017 to activate the Court's jurisdiction over the crime). No doubt this too will impact states parties' choices of candidates as it is these individuals who must be trusted to adjudicate this new and controversial crime.
Stay tuned...

On March 7

On this day in ...
... 1951 (60 years ago today), Virginia Margaret Bell (right) was born in Australia. A law graduate of the University of Sydney who was admitted as a solicitor in 1977 and to the bar in 1984, she practiced in the private practitioner and as a public defender, then became a judge in the New South Wales Court of Appeal. In 2009, she was appointed a Justice of the Australia High Court. (photo credit) Bell "is the first lesbian to serve on the High Court, and the second openly LGBT person after Michael Kirby, whom she replaced upon his retirement."

(Prior March 7 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On February 5

On this day in ...

... 1923, Betty Cantrell was born in Arkansas City, Kansas, where she lived until age 6, when her father became paralyzed and the Cantrells moved to be close to Betty's mother's family in Texas. As a young wife she lived, attended college, and taught school in various places around the country. She divorced and remarried, and as Betty Roberts (right) began studying law at Lewis & Clark in Portland. Roberts was elected in 1964 to the Oregon legislature; a decade later she ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives and then for the Senate. In 1977 she was appointed to Oregon's intermediate appellate court, and in 1982 she became the 1st woman Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, retiring in 1986. Since then she's taught political science, received many awards, presided over her state's 1st same-sex marriage, served as a mediator, and temporary senior judge. As noted in Legal History Blog, in 2008 Roberts, by then in her mid-80s, published With Grit and by Grace: Breaking Trails in Law and Politics - A Memoir; it was the subject of this laudatory review by Albany Women's Studies Professor Julie Novkov.

(Prior February 5 posts are here, here, and here.)

On January 31

On this day in ...
... 2006 (5 years ago today), Sandra Day O'Connor completed her last day as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly a quarter-century after she'd become the 1st woman to hold that position. It'd be an overstatement to say that O'Connor (right) "retired," however, for the former Justice has remained active. (photo credit) Among other things, she's: written the Senate to support CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women that the United States has signed but not ratified; campaigned for an end to the election of state judges; served on a task force on the International Criminal Court convened by the American Society of International Law; and interviewed Justice John Paul Stevens, her just-retired colleague, for Newsweek.

(Prior January 31 posts are here, here, and here.)

Supreme balance shift

In her essay for "Women and International Criminal Law," our special edition of International Criminal Law Review (prior posts) now in production, IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Patricia M. Wald writes that

women judges (men too of course) have to be recognised as smart, fair, and hardworking if they are to wield influence ...

It appears the 2 newest arrivals to the U.S. Supreme Court got an advance copy.

Appears, too, they've heeded this sage advice from Wald, onetime Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugsolavia and Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Judging from recent reports, 2 voices are likely to be heard once the Court takes the bench to hear oral arguments this morning: the voices, that is, of Justices Sonia Sotomayor (above left) and Elena Kagan (above right). (credit for Dec. 26, 2010, Steve Petteway/Supreme Court / photo, also depicting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at center)
Since Kagan was seated at the beginning of this October Term 2010, "the tenor of the debate has changed," David Savage, Supreme Court correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, recently reported. For years, he wrote, "Supreme Court conservatives led by Justice Antonin Scalia dominated the debates during oral arguments." But now Sotomayor and Kagan "have joined the fray and reenergized the liberal wing."
Bolstering Savage's assessment was a report by New York Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak. The title pretty much said it all: "Sotomayor Guides Court’s Liberal Wing." She does so, he wrote, by close questioning and incisive commentary that, taken in combination, reveal -- dare one say empathy? Liptak preferred to say that

she has displayed a quality — call it what you will — that is alert to the humanity of the people whose cases make their way to the Supreme Court.

An example of this combination, from an article by the Wall Street Journal's Jess Bravin, regarding a recent oral argument on California prison conditions:

'When are you going to avoid the needless deaths that were reported in this record?' Justice Sonia Sotomayor said at arguments on Tuesday. 'When are you going to get around people sitting in their feces for days in a dazed state? When are you going to get to a point where you are going to deliver care that is going to be adequate?'

Amid reports that these new, "smart, fair, and hardworking" Justices may be shifting balance on the Court, Justice Scalia publicly renewed his attacks on substantive due process applied to enforce rights of women (and, here, gays).

Coincidence?

On January 1

On this day in ...
... 1925, Texas' governor appointed a special Texas Supreme Court whose members all were women. A Dallas newspaper wrote:

It was a healthy New Year gift of recognition to the woman barrister of today. This is the first instance a woman has been appointed to sit on the supreme bench; it is the first time a higher court is to be composed entirely of women and it is the initial case where a majority of the judges will be women.

The case was the appeal of a land dispute, brought by the Woodmen of the World, an influential fraternal order to which nearly all male lawyers and officials in Texas belonged. By dint of a WOW insurance program, nearly all of them had a financial interest in the case, and so were disqualified from participation in the appeal -- opening the way for the all-woman bench. The 3 women Justices who sat on the case are depicted above; from left, Hattie Leah Henenberg, a legal aid lawyer who later would serve as a state and federal prosecutor; Hortense Sparks Ward, a women's suffragist and property rights activist who in 1915 had become the 1st woman ever admitted to the Texas bar; and Ruth Virginia Brazzil, a sometime real estate broker and businesswoman said to have opposed women's suffrage. (photo credit) After issuing its decision in the sole case within its jurisdiction, the special high court disbanded at the end of May 1925.

(Prior January 1 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 28

On this day in ...
... 1894, Burnita Shelton Matthews (right) was born near Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Sent to a conservatory so that she could learn to be a music teacher, she soon switched to the law, enrolling in 1917 in what's now the George Washington University Law School. Though she passed the D.C. bar exam in 1920, the district's bar association refused her application for membership. She responded helped to founding the Woman's Bar Association of the District of Columbia and the National Association of Women Lawyers and helping to edit the Women Lawyers Journal. She taught several years at Washington College of Law, now affiliated with American University. Founder of an all-woman law firm in the 1930s, she was counsel to the pro-suffrage National Woman's Party, the property of which was condemned to build the U.S. Supreme Court. "Matthews successfully obtained the largest condemnation settlement awarded by the U.S. government at the time, $299,200." According to the website for her papers, Shelton Matthews

was active in drafting legislation to secure equal rights for women, including a law allowing women to serve on juries, laws eliminating preferences for males in inheritance, laws requiring equal pay for teachers regardless of sex, and, in 1931 and 1934, amendments to the nationality laws of the United States extending to women citizenship rights previously accorded only to men.

In 1950, having been appointed by President Harry S. Truman, Shelton Matthews became the 1st woman U.S. District Judge. (photo credit) She served in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Shelton Matthews took senior status in 1968, and served in that capacity till her death in 1988.

(Prior December 28 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 1

On this day in ...
... 2009, the U.S. Senate voted 97-0 to confirm the 1st Vietnamese American federal judge appointed with life tenure pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution. Serving since then as a U.S. District Judge for the Central District of California is Jacqueline Hong-Ngoc Nguyen (left). Nguyen was born in 1965 in Dalat, in what was then South Vietnam. When that country was defeated in 1975, she came with her family to the United States. Following undergraduate and law studies at Occidental College and UCLA, respectively, she held a number of posts, including Deputy Chief of the General Crimes Division for the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California, and Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

(Prior December 1 posts are here, here, and here.)

All-woman bench

Watched an excerpt of opening day at the Bemba trial (prior post), available in French on the International Criminal Court's YouTube channel.
Couldn't miss the rare all-woman Trial Chamber.
Presiding is Judge Sylvia Steiner (far right), who was a national judge in Brazil before she joined the ICC in 2003.
Also on the panel are Judges Joyce Aluoch (above, middle), who was a Justice on the Court of Appeal of Kenya before her 2003 election to the ICC, and Kuniko Ozaki (right) of Japan, who had been a law professor, a government official, and a U.N. officer before joining the ICC in January of this year.

On November 22

On this day in ...
... 1913, Cecilia Muñoz-Palma (right) was born in Bauan, Batangas, the Philippines.
She was valedictorian at St. Scholastica's College and earned a bachelor of laws degree from the University of the Philippines in 1937 -- the same year that she placed 1st on her country's bar examination. She founded the Woman Lawyers’ Association of the Philippines (WLAP) Free Legal Aid Clinic. In 1954, she earned a master of laws degree at Yale. That same year she became a local judge in the Philippines. In 1968 she served as President of the Philippines' Constitutional Commission, which drafted the 1987 Constitution, and also was elevated to the country's Court of Appeals. She served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines -- the 1st woman on that high court -- from 1973 until her 65th birthday, on this day in 1978. Among her publications is a 2001 collection of speeches, entitled Mirror of My Soul. Justice Muñoz-Palma died in 2006.


(Prior November 22 posts are here, here, and here.)

A world of women judges

'Mary's sure got some nice digs.'
'She sure does.'

So went a conversation overheard at the just-concluded annual meeting of National Association of Women Judges, held last week in San Francisco. (IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales' post on the 2007 NAWJ conference is here.)
The "digs"?
The 105-year-old building just south of the city's Market Street that houses the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. On its walls may be found the mosaic at right.
"Mary"?
Presumably, Judge Mary M. Schroeder, who served as the circuit's Chief Judge from 2000 to 2007, the 1st woman to hold that post. Or maybe it was Judge Mary Margaret McKeown, who's served on the same circuit since 1998. Probably not, as she tends to use her middle name -- but perhaps the very fact of confusion says something about growing presence of women on the bench. (In all, 11 women now serve on the 47-member circuit.)
What's more, an event I had the privilege to attend spoke of a globally growing presence.
The event was a reception for 27 international judges -- 26 women and 1 man -- present at the meeting. Making the trip possible for many of them was the generosity of New York attorney Robert M. Kaufman and American Society of International Law (whose greetings ASIL Fellow extraordinaire Preeti Kundra Deshmukh and I were honored to extend).
Welcoming the judges were Alaska Supreme Court Justice Dana Fabe, NAWJ President, and Judge Ramona J. Garrett of the Superior Court of Solano County, California, chair of the 2010 NAWJ International Judges’ Welcoming Committee.
Then followed uplifting reports from many of the international judges about their work at home. Argentina Supreme Court Justice Supreme Court Justice Carmen Argibay told of efforts to curb violence against women. Another reported that in her court 2/3 of the judges were women; they'd become entrenched at a time when compensation did not attract male candidates.
Among those present was the Honorable Leticia Kikonyogo (left), Deputy Chief Justice of Uganda. She'd begun her judicial career as a grade one magistrate in 1973. A children's rights expert who is also a founding member and past President of the International Association of Women Judges (logo bottom right), Kikonyogo now serves as the Head of the Court of Appeal and President of the Constitutional Court in her country.
Also noteworthy was Senior Judge Ihssan Barakat (below left), Judicial Council - Court of Appeal, the 1st woman to serve as a chief of court in Jordan.
Here's the list of all these honorable judges:
Argentina
Supreme Court Justice Carmen Argibay (below right)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Judge Amela Skrobo, Municipal Court of Sarajevo/Criminal Division
Canada
Justice Geraldine Sparrow, Ontario Court of Justice
Ghana
Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, Commercial Court of Ghana
Hungary
Judge Péter Szepesházi, Buda Central District Court, Budapest
Israel
Justice Rachel Barkai, Beer Sheva District Court of Appeal
Judge Ruth Lebhar Sharon, District Court of Tel Aviv
Jordan
Senior Judge Ihssan Barakat (left), Judicial Council - Court of Appeal
Malawi
High Court Justice Esme Chombo
Nigeria
Justice Yetunde Adesanya, High Court of Lagos State
Justice Mojisola Dada, High Court of Lagos State
Chief Magistrate Eniola Fabamwo, Lagos State Judiciary
Justice Titilola Ojikutu-Oshode, High Court of Lagos State
Justice Bola Okikiolu-Ighile, High Court of Lagos State
Philippines
Judge Rosalie Lui, Organization: Municipal Trial Court
Portugal
Judge Rosa dos Remédios Lima Teixeira, Judicial Court of Covilhã
South Korea
Judge Juyeon Baik, Seoul Administrative Court
Judge Da-Eun Choi, Anyang Branch, Suwon District Court
Judge Yongshin Chung, Seoul Central District Court
Judge Sujin Lee, Jeonju District Court
Judge Yu Lim Song, Bankruptcy Division, Busan District Court
Tanzania
Justice Engera Mammari, Court of Appeal
Justice Sauda Mjasiri, Court of Appeal
Justice Eusebia Munuo, Court of Appeal
Uganda
Justice of Appeal Stella Amoko
Justice of Appeal Alice E. Mpaji Bahigeine
Deputy Chief Justice Leticia Kikonyogo

On September 25

On this day in ...
... 1943, Jacqueline de Guillenschmidt (left) was born into a French diplomatic family in China, in the capital city her family would have called Pékin. Following education at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, in the mid-1960s she began a career in law and government service. She practiced before the Paris bar from 1972 to 1982, then served for a time as a juge d'instruction and an administrative magistrate. Following further stints in various government ministries, she was sworn in on March 10, 2004, as a member of the Conseil constitutionnel, France's highest constitutional body. Guillenschmidt is 1 of 2 women among the Conseil's 11 members; Claire Bazy-Malaurie was sworn in just 18 days ago.

(Prior September 25 posts are here, here, and here.)

2 women judges sworn in at ICJ

At 10 Central European Time this morning, Joan E. Donoghue of the United States and Dr. Xue Hanqin of China were sworn in as the newest Judges on the 15-member International Court of Justice (right) at The Hague, Netherlands.
Judges old and new then began a planned week of public hearings in the Case Concerning Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation). Pending since 2008, the dispute arose out of events that year in 2 provinces of the Republic of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts available here.)
Today is the 1st in history that the 65-year-old ICJ bench was not composed of 14 or more men.
As posted, the only other women ever to have served was Rosalyn Higgins (left) of Great Britain, an ICJ Judge from 1995 to 2009 and ICJ President the last 3 years of that tenure.
Xue had been elected on June 29 by the U.N. Security Council and U.N. General Assembly; those bodies elected Donoghue just this past week, on September 9.
Each woman is filling out the term of a retiring judge, and each is eligible thereafter to run for election to a full term.
Both the newest members have devoted their careers to diplomacy.
Xue (left), who will celebrate her 55th birthday this Wednesday, was born in Shanghai. At Beijing University she earned her 1st law degree, a diploma in international law, a field in which she's published widely. Xue then earned an LL.M. and a J.S.D. at Columbia University School of Law in New York. As detailed at her ICJ webpage, she has held a myriad of positions in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has represented China before many international organizations; most recently, as China's Ambassador to ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. She's served as the President of the Asian Society of International Law since 2009.
As we've posted, Donoghue (left) holds a double B.A. with honors in Russian Studies and Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She's been a Visiting Professor there, and also has held positions at the Council on Foreign Relations, Georgetown University Law Center, and the George Washington University School of Law. Save for 2 stints in the Treasury Department and at Freddie Mac, she's practiced at the U.S. State Department since 1984. She'd been serving as Principal Deputy Legal Adviser at the time of her nomination to the ICJ. Donoghue is a member of the American Society of International Law, which, as shown in the video below, held a June 2010 event that featured comments by Donoghue, by current State Department Legal Adviser Harold Hongju Koh, and by Koh's immediate predecessor, John B. Bellinger III.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

The Don't Ask, Don't Tell Act infringes the fundamental rights of United States servicemembers in many ways, some described above. The Act denies homosexuals serving in the Armed Forces the right to enjoy "intimate conduct" in their personal relationships. The Act denies them the right to speak about their loved ones while serving their country in uniform; it punishes them with discharge for writing a personal letter, in a foreign language, to a person of the same sex with whom they shared an intimate relationship before entering military service; it discharges them for including information in a personal communication from which an unauthorized reader might discern their homosexuality. In order to justify the encroachment on these rights, Defendants faced the burden at trial of showing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Act was necessary to significantly further the Government's important interests in military readiness and unit cohesion. Defendants failed to meet that burden. Thus, Plaintiff, on behalf of its members, is entitled to judgment in its favor ... for violation of the substantive due process rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment.

-- U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips of the Central of District California, based in Riverside, in the 86-page opinion issued yesterday in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States, in which she ruled that the government's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" law violates the U.S. Constitution. Having so ruled on 5th Amendment due process grounds, Judge Phillips then proceeded to rule that the law, found at 10 U.S.C. § 654, which has been applied to lesbians and gays in the military since 1993, also violates the free speech and petition rights of the 1st amendment.

On August 28

On this day in ...
... 1934, Sujata Manohar (right) was born into a family of jurists. Following graduation from college in Bombay, she would read philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford, then be called to the Bar. Manohar returned to India and practiced law, often representing legal aid clients in family law matters. In 1978, she became the 1st woman appointed to the bench, and in 1994, the 1st woman Chief Justice, of the High Court of Bombay. She then was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and retired in 1999. Manohar was the 2d of 4 women who've held that position. She currently serves as a member of India's National Human Rights Commission.


(Prior August 28 posts are here, here, and here.)

3d woman on "15-man" bench

The newest member of the Philippines' highest court is a woman, though you'd never know it from the Philippine Star news lead announcing that President Benigno Aquino this week administered

the oath of office of his first appointee to the 15-man Supreme Court ...

The newest Justice is Maria Lourdes Aranal-Sereno (left), Executive Director of a thinktank, the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center. (photo credit) Aranal-Sereno served as co-counsel in 2 transnational matters resolved in favor of her client, the Philippines: Fraport, before the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, D.C., and PIATCO, before the International Chamber of Commerce-International Court of Arbitration in Singapore. She earned her law degree cum laude from the University of the Philippines, followed by an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School. Aranal-Sereno won appointment over 5 other nominees, all men.

With the arrival of Aranal-Sereno, 3 out of 15 Justices are now women; the other 2 women are Justices Conchita Carpio-Morales (far right) and Teresita J. Leonardo-De Castro (near right).

New Chief Justice for California

California soon may join the list of states whose Chief Justice is a woman.
Just days after we posted that women hold that position in 40% of the United States, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped state appellate judge Tani Cantil-Sakauye (right) to succeed Ronald George, who resigned from the Chief Justiceship effective right after the New Year. The nomination goes to a state judicial commission and then to voters, for approval on the November 2 ballot.
Pleased to report that Cantil Sakauye is a 1984 graduate of the University of California, Davis, School of Law, my home institution. As an alum she's contributed her time to the King Hall Outreach Program, an intensive 2-year law school preparation program aimed at undergraduates who will be the 1st in their families to earn a bachelor's degree or who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Cantil Sakauye practiced as a Deputy District Attorney in Sacramento, then worked for the Office of Governnor George Deukmejian. She began her career on the bench in 1990, serving 1st on the state trial courts and, since 2005, as an Associate Justice for the state's Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

Cantil-Sakauye would be the 2d woman to lead the state's highest court; the 1st, as we've posted, was Chief Justice Rose Bird. But as a Filipina-American, Cantil-Sakauye would become the state's 1st Asian American Chief Justice. Among the Associate Justices with whom she'd serve: Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, and Carol A. Corrigan. Accordingly, the arrival of Cantil-Sakauye would make the Supreme Court of California (left), like that of 3 other states in the Union, a woman-majority bench.

More women wearing robes

Contained in the cover story of the new ABA Journal is a startling statistic:
Women serve as the Chief Justice in 40% of America's 50 states, more than ever in history.
The proportion of women chiefs is greatest in one corner of the country:

Eight of the 13 Southern states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — have female judges leading their courts of last resort — more than any region in the country.

(Make that 7 of 13; a man took over as chief in Florida on the 1st of this month. Meanwhile, the chief of Texas' highest criminal court, Sharon Keller, has just been reprimanded for her handling of a capital case in 2007.)

Tennessee also joins Michigan and Wisconsin as states in which the majority of the supreme court bench is female. That's 3 women-majority high courts, compared with 2 state high courts -- Idaho and Indiana -- that have no women members.

Nationwide, 26% of state judges and 22% of federal judges are women. An increase, but still laggard compared that with the percentages of women who are law students or law firm associates -- 48% and 45%, respectively.

Provoking particular thought is the article's claim that women owe their success to the election cycle.

The article recounts findings of how Florida's "merit selection" system operated against women, then quotes political consultant Celinda Lake:

'The voters recognize qualities in judicial candidates that the legal and political elites don’t. The elites disqualify a candidate for not going to the right law school or being editor of law review. The people want judges who are good listeners and thoughtful, and women are very strong with voters in those characteristics.'

Gender essentialism aside, the claim might give pause to the country's most vocal opponent of elections for judges: Sandra Day O'Connor, the 1st woman ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

(Photo array of a few of the country's women Chief Justices, clockwise from upper right: Sue Bell Cobb, Alabama; Sarah Parker, North Carolina; Carol W. Hunstein, Georgia; Rebecca White Berch, Arizona; and Barbara A. Madsen, Washington)