Outstanding Women of International, European and Constitutional Law
The project “Outstanding Women of International, European and Constitutional Law“ is an initiative of young researchers and students. Their aim is to make distinguished women, and their important contributions to the development of the national and international legal order, visible and more widely known.
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Calendar 2022
Bertha von Suttner
 Bertha von Suttner* 9 June 1843, Prague Bertha Sophia Felicita Baroness von Suttner (née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau) was born in Prague on 9 June 1843. Bertha was raised with an international spirit and learned English, French, and Italian early on. Her education included piano and vocals lessons as well as literature classes. Bertha accepted a governess position in Vienna in 1873 with the family of Baron Karl von Suttner after her father’s death and when his fortune was exhausted. She left Vienna after the family discovered she had fallen in love with the youngest son, Arthur von Suttner. For only two weeks, she accepted a position as secretary of Alfred Nobel in Paris but then returned to Vienna. Alfred Nobel stayed close to her and the correspondence between the two carried on until he died in 1896, showing a close personal friendship between these two outstanding activists. Bertha and Arthur got married in secret in 1876 and eloped to Georgia. They earned their living by giving piano lessons and teaching languages. At that time, she also started writing newspaper articles and light novels. The married couple returned to Austria in 1885 when Arthur’s parents accepted the marriage. Bertha first learned about the peace movement during a trip to Paris; she decided to devote her literary talents to this cause. As a female author, Bertha constantly worried about the reception of her work in academic and political circles. Therefore, she published her novel Das Maschinenzeitalter under the gender-neutral pseudonym “Jemand.” She feared that a female author’s name would alienate the intended audience. The book met with a large readership and also enjoyed a broad resonance among politicians and military officials. This proved to Bertha that there was no specific female way of thinking or writing. In 1889, Bertha published her most successful book, the anti-war novel Die Waffen nieder! Eventually, she became more and more popular in the peace movement. The novel became a best-seller, was translated into more than a dozen languages. By the time of her death in 1914, over 200 000 copies were sold, making her one of the most well-known women to write about the experience of peace, militarism, and war. The success of the novel led to both accolades and criticism. Bertha’s deliberate critique of masculine militarism throughout her novel, and the moral peace which she advocated, seemed to reinforce 19th-century assumptions about the concept of peace as a feminine idea. Bertha resolutely contradicted the idea that women were naturally pacifist, and understood pacifism as a personal and intellectual achievement, stating: “[T]here is no difference between the male and female sex in regard to their position on the peace issue.” Her novel brought Bertha herself into the peace movement, which was organized internationally starting in the early 1890s. She wrote, lectured, organized peace societies, and took a leading role at peace congresses. In 1892, she founded the German Peace Society together with Alfred Herrmann Fried. Bertha founded the first German pacifist journal to make the activities of the peace society public. It was entitled like her popular anti-war novel Die Waffen nieder! and it became the medium of the peace movement. The political conception during the time of Bertha’s work was shaped by the opinion that war is inevitable and given by God. Bertha von Suttner criticized these views, questioned the alleged legality of wars, and bravely challenged public opinion. Her attendance at the First Hague Peace Conference in 1899, being the only woman to be approved to attend the conference – albeit only as an observer without the right to speak, was a milestone in her career within the peace movement. After the conference, she criticized the hesitation among states to install an international jurisdiction and implement new institutions of international law. However, Bertha continued to promote that for the prevention of wars, international understanding among the people, cooperation between states and international law are crucial. Bertha von Suttner was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 1914 before World War I broke out. She had predicted it would take place if the statesmen did not heed what the peace movement including her were urging. Until today, Bertha von Suttner remains a leading figure in international law with her thoughts on equality, pacifism, and her commitment to the peace movement. Her ideas of pacifism and the power of the peace movement influenced the First Hague Peace Conference. Together with Henry Dunant, one of the co-founders of the first Geneva Convention, and others at that time, she has shaped the world peace order as we know it today. Literature References
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1 All direct quotations contained in this text have been translated by the author from the original German into English.
Elisabeth Selbert
 Elisabeth Selbert*22. September 1896 † 9 June 1986 "The failure to appoint women to public office and their low level of participation in parliaments is simply a permanent breach of the constitution."Elisabeth Selbert was born as Martha Elisabeth Rohde on 22 September 1896 in Kassel. She grew up as one of four sisters in a petty-bourgeois and strictly protestant family. Due to financial constraints, Elisabeth could not attend high school. As a result, she instead joined the Trade and Commerce School of the Women's Education Association. Her dream of becoming a teacher failed again due to insufficient financial means. After losing her first job as a foreign correspondent of an import-export company, she worked as a postal clerk trainee in the “Reichspost” telegraph service, a position she was given because of the war-related shortage of male workers. During the November Revolution in 1918, she met Adam Selbert, her future husband, who introduced Elisabeth to the world of politics. In the same year, she joined the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and became an active member. In the early days of the Weimar Republic, she expressed her views in speeches and contributions on the duty of women to inform and engage themselves politically. In 1919 she successfully gained a seat in the Niederzwehren Municipal Parliament. Equal rights for men and women were an important concern for Elisabeth Selbert. As a delegate of the first Reich Women’s Conference in 1920, she criticised the current status and demanded its reform. At the conference, she stated, "that although we have equal rights for our women today, these equal rights are still purely paper ones…. We must now work to ensure that equal rights are implemented in practice to the last consequence." After getting married and having two children, Elisabeth Selbert continued her work as a telegraph office official. She also remained active in politics but felt that she lacked the theoretical knowledge necessary for her engagement. Therefore, Selbert hoped that "legal training would help [her] be more politically effective." Supported by her husband and both their families, she started preparing for her A-levels ("Abitur") in self-study while her husband and grandparents cared for the children. In 1926 she obtained her "Abitur" as the first female external student. In the same year, Selbert took up law studies, initially as the only female student at the University of Marburg, before transferring to the University of Göttingen, where she graduated with honours after only six semesters. In 1930 she wrote her doctoral thesis on "Marital breakdown as grounds for divorce.” In her doctoral work, she criticised the principle of guilt, which virtually deprived women of their rights in divorce. Ahead of her time, she argued for the application of the principle of irretrievable breakdown of marriage. However, her proposals were not taken up and implemented in Germany until the marriage law reform in 1977. When the Nazi party came into power, Adam Selbert was compulsorily retired as deputy mayor of Niederzwehren in 1933 due to his party affiliation. From then on, Elisabeth's had to carry the entire burden of her family. In 1934, she received her second state examination, and with the support of two senior judges of the Higher Regional Court, Selbert was admitted to the bar. This was an extraordinary task, as her admission took place against the will of the National Socialist President of the Higher Regional Court, the vote of the Bar Association, and the decision of the Gauleiter. Selbert then took over a Jewish law firm, whose previous owners had been forced to emigrate, and began her work as a lawyer with a clear focus on family law. However, her law firm was destroyed during the Second World War. Consequently, her family was forced to move to Melsungen in 1944. After the war, Elisabeth Selbert was able to resume her work as a lawyer and continue her political commitment. Due to her outstanding language skills, she was commissioned by the American military government to help rebuild the judiciary and administration in Kassel. In 1946 she became a member of the city council in Kassel and served as a deputy to the constitutional advisory state assembly of Greater Hesse. In this context, Elisabeth Selbert campaigned for equal pay for men and women. Against some resistance, but with the support of Kurt Schumacher, Selbert was finally appointed to the Parliamentary Council in 1948, which had the task of drafting the new Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. She was one of only four women among 65 voting members of the Parliamentary Council – along with Frieda Nadig (SPD), Helene Weber (CDU) and Helene Wessel (Zentrum). At first, the women's issues were not on her list of priorities as a member of the Parliamentary Council, partly because she believed that traditional role patterns had finally been overcome. However, when she realised that the original draft wording for Article 3 of the Basic Law did not include equal rights for women in relation to men, her mission began. She fought against alternative wordings such as "The legislator must treat the same things equally and different things according to their characteristics,” which would have legalised discrimination against women based on supposedly natural differences. She, instead, proposed the inclusion of language that stated: "Men and women shall have equal rights" ("Männer und Frauen sind gleichberechtigt"). This proposal would have required a revision of the German Civil Code, particularly regarding family law provisions. This proposal was met with almost unanimous rejection, including by members of her own party and the other three female delegates. However, Selbert refused to give up and continued to pursue her goal for the inclusion of her draft wording of Art. 3 (2) of the Basic Law. She launched a high-profile campaign involving women's associations, female trade unionists, and politicians. It is said that as a result of her campaign, parliamentarians of all parties received wash-baskets of protest letters. Finally, on 18 January 1949, Art. 3(2) of the Basic Law was adopted without opposition to the wording Selbert had originally proposed. Looking back to this moment, she stated: "I had a corner of power in my hand and I exploited it, in all the depth, in all the breadth that was rhetorically available to me. It was the great moment of my life when women's equality came to be accepted." In the 1949 election, Selbert narrowly missed a seat in the German "Bundestag." Nonetheless, she remained a member of the Hessian parliament until 1958. After she had failed in her bid to be nominated as the first female judge of the Federal Constitutional Court, she turned her back on politics and resumed work as an attorney in Kassel. Selbert died on 9 June 1986 in her hometown of Kassel, a few months before her 90th birthday. Literature References
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Author Verena Kahl (M.A., Ass. jur.) |
1 All direct quotations contained in this text have been translated by the author from the original German into English.
Magdalene Schoch
 © UHH/UniversitätsarchivMagdalene Schoch*15 February 1897 † 6 November 1987 "Being the daughter of a mother who was way ahead of her time, I became a suffragette at the age of twelve, when I began to help her organize an association for women’s franchise in our small, very conservative home town.1"Magdalene Schoch was born in Würzburg, Germany in 1897. Despite her poor upbringing and the fact that women were only given access to higher education in Germany in 1908, she was determined to attend university. To pursue her goals, she attended a boy’s school to acquire the diploma necessary for university admission. In 1916, she started studying law at Würzburg University and obtained her doctorate four years later in 1920. Thus, Schoch became one of the first women in Germany to attend university. Schoch’s doctoral supervisor was the renowned international law expert Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy who quickly became her mentor and friend. She wrote her doctoral thesis on "English War Legislation Against Enemy Corporations," wherein she examined the financial issues implicated in English martial law in the years following the first world war. After submitting her thesis, she followed Mendelssohn Bartholdy to work as his assistant at the law faculty of The University of Hamburg. In 1932, Schoch achieved another feather in her cap and became the first-ever woman in Germany to habilitate in law. Her habilitation treatise is, to date, a leading authority and is regularly cited in textbooks and commentaries. She then became the first private lecturer at the University of Hamburg's Faculty of Law and Political Science in the subjects of international private and procedural law, comparative law, and civil procedural law. During her time in Hamburg, Schoch worked as an assistant at the Institute of Foreign Policy, which was one of the first institutions worldwide to focus on peace research and, as such laid the foundation for the development of political science in Germany. Schoch was also an important factor in the internationalisation of The University of Hamburg – making it the first German university to include US-American and English law in its curriculum. Later on, she became one of the heads of the Union Of Women in Hamburg against the Nazi Regime. Amidst the rise of fascism, she remained in solidarity with the oppressed, especially her Jewish colleagues. When a representative of the “Vereinigung Carl Schurz” demanded the names of Jewish members of the magazine “Amerika-Post” to be left out, Schoch took measures to remove the name of the “Vereinigung Carl Schurz” from the front page instead. After the Nazi regime made it illegal for Jews to be members of associations, she dissolved her women’s rights organization “ZONTA Club Hamburg” to avoid excluding members and instead continued to meet up privately. Post the seizure of power by the Nazi regime, Schoch’s mentor, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, was initially retired in September 1933 due to his Jewish ancestry. Later in 1934, he was forced to resign as head of the "Institute for Foreign Policy.” Consequently, he left the Third Reich in 1934 for England, where he died in 1936. Attending Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s funeral in England jeopardised Schoch’s career prospects in Germany. In 1937 when asked to join the NSDAP, Schoch stayed true to her values and political ideas and resigned and emigrated to the US. Hers remained the only autonomous resignation at the Faculty of Law during the Nazi regime. This move was a huge setback for Schoch’s career prospects. Initially, she only found a badly paid assistant job at Harvard University despite working as a respected private lecturer in Germany. Nonetheless, she continued publishing academic articles and – after obtaining US-American citizenship – was able to find employment at the United States Department of Justice. In 1952, Schoch was granted admission to the Supreme Court Bar and became one of the lawyers who argued the ground-breaking case of Brown vs. Board of Education. This was the case that led to the abolition of racial segregation in US-American schools. She never ceased to fight for the rights of African Americans and women in her new homeland. Schoch also became the provider for a family of six when her sister and her children joined her in the US, challenging the stereotypes of gender and family of her time. Instead of potentially becoming the first female law professor in Germany, she stayed true to her values and did not give in to societal pressure. Schoch’s life story is a lesson for all. Articles
Podcasts https://www.podcampus.de/nodes/wMBre (last access: 1 March 2022), Prof. Dr. Rainer Nicolaysen, Wer war eigentlich Magdalene Schoch – Eine Einführung in historische Spurensuche, Hamburg 2014. Author Julia Lips |
1 All direct quotations contained in this text have been translated by the author from the original German into English.
Simone Veil
 Simone Veil* 13 July 1927 † 30 June 2017 „Europe's destiny and the future of the free world are entirely in our hands.“Simone Veil was born on 13th July 1927 in Nice, France. She grew up as one of five children in a loving home in France. Her family was of Jewish descent, however, non-religious. Her life changed dramatically when the second world war broke out, and German National Socialists occupied Nice. Nevertheless, Veil’s family obtained fake identity documents and continued living in France. Veil took her baccalauréat exams in March 1944. The day after her exams, her fake identity documents were detected, and she was deported to Auschwitz, where she was kept until January 1945. As a Holocaust survivor herself, she was an important advocate for preserving the memory of Holocaust victims. In May 1945, Veil managed to return to France, where she was informed that she had passed her baccalauréat exams and therefore was allowed to study at a university. Her dream was to become a lawyer. Thus, she studied law and political science at the University of Paris. While studying, she met her future husband, Antoine Veil. They got married in October 1946 and had three sons. Her husband did not support her dream of becoming a lawyer because, in his opinion, being a lawyer was not a profession that women should pursue. The couple came to a compromise with that she rather pursues a career as a magistrate. Veil began her political career in the National Prison Administration of France, which is part of the French ministry of justice. She worked there for seven years and committed herself to enhancing the living conditions of prisoners. Afterward, she became the first female secretary-general of the Supreme Magistracy Council. In 1974, Simone Veil became the Minister of Health in France. One of her biggest achievements in that position was legalizing abortion in France. The law enforced, for that matter, is often referred to as “Loi Veil.” In 1979, she became a Member of the European Parliament, where she was elected as the first female president of the European Parliament. In 1993, she returned to the French Government as the Minister of State and Minister of Health, where she continued her fight for women’s rights and introduced measures for helping disabled people. In 1988, she became a member of the Constitutional Council of France. As a politician, she always fought for cohesion in the European Union, women’s rights, and preserving the memory of Holocaust victims. In 2008, Veil was awarded the Charlemagne Prize. Simone Veil died on 30th June 2017 at her home in Paris, two weeks shy of her 90th birthday. She was honored with a military ceremony in July 2017, which was attended by several politicians and Holocaust survivors. Her grand political achievements are honored to this day. Literature References Monography
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Author Lilian Langer |
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
 Ruth Bader Ginsburg*15 March 1933 † 18 September 2020 "People ask me sometimes, when – when do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the [Supreme] Court? And my answer is: when there are nine."Life, Achievements, and Impact Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg (nee Bader) was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 15 March 1933. She was the daughter of Nathan Bader and Celia Amster Bader, whose families were Jewish immigrants from Europe. Nathan ran a fur manufacturing business with the help of Celia, who also juggled household duties. Right from the start, Celia supported Ruth in her academic ambitions. However, Celia was not able to live to see the notorious women’s rights activist and legal advocate for gender equality and social justice that Ruth grew up to become. The day before she graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, Celia, then aged 48, succumbed to a battle with cancer. In 1954, Ruth received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University. She was awarded high honors in Government as well as distinction in all subjects. She also served as Class Marshal for the College of Arts and Sciences. At Cornell University, she met Martin D. Ginsburg whom she married nine days after her graduation in June 1954. The newlywed Ginsburgs moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, as Martin Ginsburg was called up to active duty in the United States Army. During their time in Oklahoma, Ruth Bader Ginsburg worked for the Social Security Agency, where she was demoted after becoming pregnant with her first child. She gave birth to a daughter in 1955. After giving birth to her daughter Jane, Ruth enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1956. She followed her husband, who had already started legal studies at Harvard Law. It is, however, worth noting that Ruth took the LSAT[1] before her husband did, even though he eventually was one class ahead of her.[2] In 1956, the presence of female students at Harvard Law was fairly new. Women were first admitted in 1950 and this number only stood at nine when Ruth was in law school. With only nine women in a class of 552 men, Ruth encountered reluctance from some of the senior teaching staff. Once, at a dinner, Dean Erwin N. Griswold asked the women of Harvard Law: “Why are you here occupying a seat that could be held by a man?“ Being asked about this particular event during an interview in early 2020, she recalled: “[H]e wanted to be armed with stories from the women themselves, about how they plan to make use of their law degrees, and not just waste this wonderful education they would get.”[3] In her second year at Harvard Law, Martin Ginsburg was diagnosed with cancer. Even though Ruth Bader Ginsburg was busy with both law school and taking care of her husband and daughter, she managed to get a seat on the Harvard Law Review editorial board – invitations were reserved for only the most outstanding of students[4]. Martin Ginsburg made a full recovery, and with the support of his wife and classmates, he graduated from Harvard Law in 1958. When he started working for a law firm in New York that year, Ruth transferred to Columbia Law School in Manhattan since Dean Griswold did not allow her to complete her law studies elsewhere. Remarkedly, she was also selected as an editor of the Columbia Law Review. This was an extraordinary achievement since no other – female or male – student had served on both law reviews earlier.[5] She received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School in 1959, graduating at the top of her class. Notwithstanding her extraordinary success, she had a dreadful time finding a job. In retrospect, she remembered: “[T]here wasn’t a single firm in New York… two called me back, I came down to have the interview, but in the end… And one of the reasons was they were concerned about how their wives would feel about working closely with a woman. And it amazed me, because they all had women secretaries, but that’s just the way it was.”[6] Eventually, Gerald Gunther, who taught her at Columbia, recommended her as clerk to Judge Edmund Palmieri of the United States District Court for Southern District of New York. From 1959 to 1961, she served as his clerk. After completing the clerkship with Judge Palmieri in 1961, Ruth returned to Columbia Law School as Research Associate. She joined the Project on International Procedure and became its Associate Director in 1962. As part of this project, she and her daughter Jane went to Lund University, Sweden, where she studied the legal system and worked with Judge Anders Bruzelius on a textbook “Civil Procedure in Sweden” which was published in 1965. She also gave birth to her son, James, that year. From 1963 to 1972, she worked as a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law in Newark. There, she served as the Women’s Rights Law Reporter’s first-ever faculty advisor. In 1972, Ginsburg returned to Columbia Law School as a Professor of Law. The same year she co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and served as General Counsel from 1973 to 1980. Among other things, the project aimed at litigating against institutionalized sex discrimination. In 1972, together with her husband Martin, Ruth won their first landmark sex-discrimination case Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue before the United States Appeals Court for the Tenth Circuit. Shortly after, in 1973, Ruth appeared before the United States Supreme Court as amicus curiae[7] in the case of Frontiero v. Richardson. This case, which dealt with spousal benefits for service members that were granted based on sex, has been considered a landmark Supreme Court decision on sex discrimination. Appearing as an advocate before the Supreme Court in the subsequent sex-discrimination cases of Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (argued and decided in 1975) and Duren v. Missouri (argued in 1978 and decided in 1979), her reputation as a skilled advocate for constitutional protection from sex-based discrimination solidified. During this time, Ginsburg also contributed to the textbook “Text, Cases, and other Materials on Sex-Based Discrimination” with Kenneth M. Davidson and Herma Hill Kay, which was published in 1974. She landed several teaching jobs as a visiting lecturer teaching at several faculties in the United States and Europe, including Harvard Law School in 1971, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Strasbourg, both in 1975. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter nominated her as a Judge to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 13 years later, President Bill Clinton appointed her as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be the second woman after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Her nomination as Associate Judge was confirmed by the Senate on 3 August 1993, with 96 votes in favor, three votes against, and one abstention. Gerald Gunther, who had recommended Ruth as Columbia clerk to Judge Palmieri in 1959, testified for her at the confirmation hearings.[8] On 10 August 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg took the oath of office. Serving on the Supreme Court until her passing at the age of 87 on 18 September 2020, Ruth played a decisive part in pivotal cases in the field of social justice, women’s rights, and sex discrimination, by joining in majority opinions (e.g., United States v. Virginia, 1996) or firmly dissenting (e.g., Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, 2007). Her lifelong work has paved the way for women in the United States and beyond. Literature References
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Dame Rosalyn Higgins
 Dame Rosalyn Higgins*2 June 1937 “[…] I will endeavour to show international law as a normative system, harnessed to the achievement of common values – values that speak to us all, whether we are rich or poor, black or white, of any religion or none, or come from countries that are industrialized or developing.”(Higgins, Rosalyn, Problems and Prospects: International Law and How We Use It, 1st edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1994)Life and Achievements Dame Rosalyn Higgins was born as Rosalyn Cohen on 2 June 1937 in North Kensington, London. Despite the ongoing World War II, she grew up in London but was evacuated twice during the war. For the first time in 1939 during the Phoney War and for the second time because of The Blitz in 1940 but returned to London before the end of the war. Dames Rosalyn started her schooling during the war by attending a local convent school before her mother had her transferred to Burlington Grammar School. Her his-tory teacher there, Miss Huston, advised her to study law at Cambridge University. Ultimately, after sitting the entrance exams and being accepted into Cambridge University, Dame Hig-gins studied law from 1956 to 1959 at Girton College as the first in her family. In 1958, she interned at the UN Office for Legal Affairs. During this internship, Mrs. Higgins was introduced to the mechanism of the UN, and it showed her that in dealing with international situations, there will always be various points of view that have to be considered.[1] After that internship, Dame Rosalyn finished her studies at Cambridge University and graduated with an LLB in 1959. In 1959, she started her research for her JSD at the University of Yale, where she studied for three years under Myres S. McDougal. Her JSD research was funded by what is today known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship. McDougal taught her that one must think of the hat one is wearing when dealing with the law.[2] Another important rule she learned at Yale was that international law is not about rules, which was a fact no one had ever taught her during her studies at the University of Cambridge.[3] In 1961 she married Baron Terence Higgins, a former athlete who competed at the 1952 Summer Olympics and a Politian within the Conservative Party. In the same year, Dame Higgins became a junior fellow in international studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and stayed there until 1963.[4] in 1962, Rosalyn Higgins finished her JSD, which was later published as her first book under the title “Development of International Law through the Political Organs of the United Nations”.[5] After being offered her first full-time employment at Chatham House (until 2004, known as Royal Institute for International Affairs), an independent international affairs think tank,[6] Dame Higgins left the LSE for Chatham House. While at Chatham House, Dame Higgins published five books: the first two books (the Middle East and Asia) of what would become a series of four on UN Peacekeeping and the books “Conflict of Interests: International Law in a Divided World”, “The Administration of the United Kingdom Foreign Policy through the United Nations” and “International Organization: Law in Movement – essays in memory of John McMahon” (Ed. with James Fawcett). When Andrew Shonfield took over the position of Director from Kenneth Younger, the focus of Chatham House changed from a more international focus to a focus on the EEC, which led Dame Higgins to leave Chatham House.[7] She then returned to the LSE from 1974 to 1978 as a visiting fellow and started to work for the International Relations Department there.[8] While at the LSE, she also sat the Bar exam after her husband encouraged her to do so and went on a sabbatical to the Yale University in 1977, where she gave a lecture on the European Convention on Human Rights. In 1978 she departed from LSE again after the University of Kent had offered her the chair of International Law but ultimately returned to the LSE in 1981, which also offered her the chair of International Law in the Department of Law. While at Kent, Professor Higgins concluded her book series on UN Peacekeeping by publishing Vol. III on Africa in 1980 and Vol. IV on Europe in 1981. During Dame Higgins second and third time at the LSE, she gave among other things a lecture in international law which, by her decision, was not only attended by law students but by international relations students as well. She also extended the offerings in international law by giving lectures on the International Law of Natural Resources, the United Nations (Law), and International Human Rights.[9] In 1984, three years after Professor Higgins had returned to the LSE for what would be her final stay there, she became the UK member on the United Nations Committee on Human Rights. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire for her work at that committee in 1995. In her last stint at LSE, she gave the General Course on Public International Law at the 1991 Hague lectures on “International Law and the Avoidance, Containment, and Resolution of Disputes.”[10] While at LSE for the final time, Rosalyn Higgins published another three books besides the publishing of her lecture from the 1991 Hague lectures: “The Taking of Property by the State: Recent Developments in International Law” in 1982, “Liberté de Circulation des Personnes en Droit International” together with Maurice Flory in 1988 and “Problems and Process: International Law and how we use it” in 1994. After 14 years consecutive years as Professor for International Law at the LSE, in 1995, Rosalyn Higgins resigned her chair and left the university for good. She also resigned from theUN Committee on Human Rights in 1995 to become the first female judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Here she was a part of landmark cases and advisory opinions such as the advisory opinion the “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons” in 1996, to which Judge Higgins as a newly appointed judge delivered a dissenting opinion.[11] In 2006 Judge Higgins became the first female president of the ICJ.[12] During her presidency, she modernized the ICJ enabling it to deal with the increasing workload. Additionally, she set out to improve the dialogue between the different international courts and “to have an efficient, friendly relationship with them.”[13] In addition to her heavy workload at the ICJ Rosalyn Higgins published “Themes and Theories: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Writings in International Law” in 2009, which consists out of two volumes and is described by Lesley Dingle as “a truly monumental personal epitaph.”[14] Rosalyn Higgins retired in 2009 but continued her Balzan Research Project (in 2007, she had won the Balzan Price for International Law) on a new Oppenheim’s International Law volume, which led to the publishing of “Oppenheim’s International Law: United Nations” by Rosalyn Higgins, Philippa Webb, Dapo Akande, Sandesh Sivakumaran, and James Sloan in 2017.[15] In 2019 the Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (LAPE) by the Brill publishing company named a Prize in honour of Dame Rosalyn Higgins, the Rosalyn Higgins Prize.[16] Literature References
Further Sources
Author Christian Raby
[2] See Lesley Dingle, Biography: Dame Rosalyn Higgins, available at: https://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent-scholars-archivedame-rosalyn-higgins/biography-dame-rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 30 May 2022). [3] See Lesley Dingle, Biography: Dame Rosalyn Higgins, available at: https://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent-scholars-archivedame-rosalyn-higgins/biography-dame-rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 30 May 2022). [4] See Dame Rosalyn Higgins (Professor of International Law, 1981-1995), available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/law/centenary/people/rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 31 May 2022). [5] See D. W. Bowett, Review of The Development of International Law through the Political Organs of the United Nations by Rosalyn Higgins, Cambridge Law Journal, 1964, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 807-809; Oscar Schachter, Review of The Development of International Law Through the Political Organs of the United Nations by Rosalyn Higgins, American Journal of International Law, 1965, Vol. 59 No. 1, pp. 168-170; Lesley Dingle, Biography: Dame Rosalyn Higgins, available at: https://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent-scholars-archivedame-rosalyn-higgins/biog-raphy-dame-rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 30 May 2022). [6] See https://www.chathamhouse.org/ (last accessed 31 May 2022). [7] Lesley Dingle/ Daniel Bates, Conversation with Dame Rosalyn Higgins former President of the International Court of Justice, Question 48, interview transcript, 14 March 2014, available at: https://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent-scholars-archivedame-rosalyn-higgins/conversation-dame-rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 31 May 2022). [8] See Dame Rosalyn Higgins (Professor of International Law, 1981-1995), available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/law/centenary/people/rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 31 May 2022). [9] See Dame Rosalyn Higgins (Professor of International Law, 1981-1995), available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/law/centenary/people/rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 31 May 2022). [10] Higgins, Rosalyn, International Law and the Avoidance, Containment and Resolution of Disputes General Course on Public International Law (Volume 230), in: Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law, available at: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/the-hague-academy-collected-courses/*A9780792324720_01#A9780792324720_01-16 (last accessed: 28 May 2022). [11] Dissenting Opinion of Judge Higgins, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 1996, pp. 583-593, available at: https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/95. [12] See Presidency of the ICJ, available at: https://www.icj-cij.org/en/presidency (last accessed 28 May 2022). [13] Lesley Dingle/ Daniel Bates, Conversation with Dame Rosalyn Higgins former President of the International Court of Justice, Question 104 & 108, interview transcript, 14 March 2014, available at: https://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent-scholars-archivedame-rosalyn-higgins/conversation-dame-rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 31 May 2022). [14] Lesley Dingle is a fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International law and the Foreign and International Law Librarian at the Squire Law Library at the University of Cambridge. She interviewed Dame Rosalyn Higgins in-depth about her life and career in 2014 and wrote an extensive biography of Rosalyn Higgins, available at https://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/eminent-scholars-archivedame-rosalyn-higgins/biography-dame-rosalyn-higgins (last accessed 31 May 2022). [15] See Balzan Research Project, available at: https://www.balzan.org/en/prizewinners/rosalyn-higgins/research-project-higgins (last accessed 30 May 2022). |
Elizabeth Odio Benito
 https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/a7630194-10b9-4878-8845-ff407c02dc8a © CC BY SA by CorteIDH Elizabeth Odio Benito*15 September 1939 "Dignity is the center, the heart of the human rights regime." [1]
Life, Achievements, and Impact Elizabeth Odio Benito was born September 15th, 1939 in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. She attended the “Colegio Surperior de Señoritas” in San José. She was later encouraged by her uncle to study law. Odio Benito graduated with a master´s degree from the University of Costa Rica in 1964 and started practising as a lawyer at the Law Firm Odio and Partners in Costa Rica until 1977. Nevertheless, she did not stop her education with her law degree. She also studied Social and Economical Development at the University of Buenos Aires and later Gender Studies at the University of Costa Rica. Although being involved so much, she was also an academic. She was a lecturer at the University of Costa Rica from 1968 and later gained a full professorship in 1986. In her role as an academic, she became the Vice-President for Academic Affairs at the University of Costa Rica. She also visited several other universities in Europe and the USA to spread her knowledge and ideology. Benito received her Emeritus status in 1995 at the University of Costa Rica. However, her doings were not only limited to the educational context. She served as Secretary to the “Colegio de Abogados” from 1976 to 1978, which is the bar association of Costa Rica, and continued as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General from 1978 until 1982. It was in that period that she had her first major case in international law. As minister of justice, Odio Benito represented Costa Rica´s government in the Gallardo-Case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica. This case was the first case of this court. In addition to that, it was the Costa Rican government investigating a potential violation of Human Rights by Costa Rican authorities, which lead to the case also being known as “Costa Rica vs. Costa Rica.” This case represented her ideology and view on Human Rights by wanting justice for minor groups - especially women and prisoners. After that, she became Minister of Justice a second time in her home country in 1990. Her success in international and especially Human Rights Law was extraordinary. In recognisation of her achievements she became a judge at the ICTY and was elected as Vice-President of that court in 1993. A notable case heard by her during her time at the ICTY was the Čelebići-Case in 1997. For the first time an international criminal court found rape to be a form of torture and pronounced on the concept of command responsibility. This judgement is a landmark and is cited in other judgements of different courts and tribunals dealing with war crime cases. Not only did her career have a judicial path, but also a political one. In 1998 she even became Vice-President of her home country Costa Rica and Minister for the Environment, Nature and Municipal Affairs of Costa Rica. She also dedicated herself as President of the United Nations Working Group of the Commission on Human Rights and has been a judge at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands since 2000. She also was part of the Drafting of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. Another notable milestone in her career is her achievement of serving as both a judge and the Vice-President of the ICC from 2003 until 2012. Curiously Costa Rica did not support her candidacy at the ICC. Thus, Odio Benito being elected to the court without her own country's help, was highly impressive and shows how hard she worked to become the person and professional she is today. Currently, she is the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a Member and Special Rapporteur of the Sub-Committee on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Elizabeth Odio Benito is a luminary in the fields of Human Rights and International Criminal Law, in addition to standing up for women‘s rights and non-discrimination. Literature References Elizabeth Odio Benito is an author of numerous articles on political and social issues published in different newspapers and specialized journals of Costa Rica in the last 50 years (see curriculum vitae at Corte IGH). References Elizabeth Odio Benito, in: Audiovisual Library of International Law, https://legal.un.org/avl/ls/Odio-Benito_CLP.html#. Elizabeth Odio Benito, in: Academic, https://de-academic.com/dic.nsf/dewiki/2343075. Simons, Marlise: International Criminal Court Issues First Sentence, in: The New York Times, 11.07.2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/world/europe/international-criminal-court-issues-first-sentence.html (abgerufen am 18.07.2022). In the matter of Viviana Gallardo et al., Advisory Opinion No. G 101/81, Inter-Am.Ct.H.R. (Ser. A) (1984), in: University of Minnesota, Human Rights Library, 1984, http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/iachr/b_11_11a.htm. Crimes against serbs in the ČELEBIĆI CAMP, in: UN ICTY https://www.icty.org/x/file/Outreach/view_from_hague/jit_celebici_en.pdf Other Sources @delfinocrc via Twitter, May 27th 2020, https://twitter.com/delfinocrc/status/1265450670930436097?s=20.
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Navanethem Pillay
 Navanethem Pillay*23. September 1941 "I find equal rights for all a very strong argument for me to build self-confidence. And once I’ve done that and helped myself, then you think you have to help all the others as well.”On the 23rd of September in 1941, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay was born into a family of Tamil descent in the poor neighbourhood of Clairwood, Durban, South Africa. As a woman of colour during apartheid, she suffered from racial and sexist discrimination, poverty, and social exclusion. She was the fifth of eight children and grew up speaking the Tamil language and practicing Hinduism. Despite their own financial situation, Navi’s parents ensured that all their children received an education. A feature of the time she was growing up in, Navi’s school education was propagandistic and sub-standard. Nonetheless, she was able to finish high school, unlike many of her school friends who had to drop out and get married. After completing high school, Navi enrolled in Natal University to study law. Her study facility was a warehouse far from the main campus as the university was racially segregated. She received her LLB degree in 1965. In the same year, she married her husband Gaby, also a lawyer, who later passed away. During their marriage, the couple adopted two children. After completing her articles in 1967, no big law firm would hire Navi due to her gender, skin colour, and low-income background. Consequently, she decided to start her own law practice – as the first woman in the province of Natal (today: KwaZulu-Natal) to do so. In 1981, after almost fifteen years of practicing law, Navi was able to attend Harvard Law School on a scholarship for an LLM degree. She returned to Harvard for a doctoral degree which she received in 1988. Her dissertation topic was on the political role of judges in the apartheid system. During Navi’s work as a lawyer, courtrooms were segregated, and her white colleagues often made her feel excluded and tried to humiliate her. She is known for fighting against the unlawful treatment of detained apartheid activists, including her own husband and well-known faces of the anti-apartheid movement who were imprisoned in Robben Island. Although she was often discouraged from fighting for other causes, Navi always spoke up against sexism in the country and her community. As a lawyer, she also represented domestic abuse victims and co-founded two women’s rights NGOs, Equality Now and the Advice Desk for the Abused. When after long years of struggle the South African apartheid system finally ended in 1994 and South Africa established its constitution, she joined the Women’s National Coalition and contributed to the addition of the equality clause in the South African constitution. She stopped working as a lawyer in 1995 when she became the first person of colour to be appointed as a judge at Natal High Court. However, her term did not last long, as in the same year she was elected as the first female judge at the newly erected International Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha – a court established through the UN Security Council to prosecute individuals in relation to the Rwandan genocide. During her time at the ICTR, she was on the bench for numerous landmark cases. Most memorably, she played a prominent role in the Akayesu trial which ended with the first international conviction for genocide. The Akayesu judgment also established that acts of rape could constitute genocide and it contained the first definition of rape in international criminal law jurisprudence. Due in large part to Navi’s influence, this definition was broad, gender- neutral, and victim-focused. Other important cases of her tenure were the conviction of the former president of Rwanda and the Media Case in which the Trial Chamber established criminal responsibility for inciting genocide through media propaganda. She became president of the ICTR in 1999 and left the court in 2003 to become a judge at the International Criminal Court’s Appeals Chamber. In 2008, Navi was elected as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as the first African. She served as High Commissioner from 2008 to 2014, renewing her term once. During her terms, her goal was to fight for marginalised groups, such as migrant workers, LGBTQI* people, indigenous people, and people with disabilities. Her biggest critics were the USA due to her liberal views on women’s reproductive rights and her critical stance towards Israel. Today, she serves as an ad-hoc judge in the ICJ case of The Gambia vs. Myanmar on the Application of the Convention of Genocide, and she is Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem, and Israel. In addition, she is president of the International Committee against the Death Penalty. Literature references
Further sources YouTube interview series: “Women of the Liberation” by eNCA (all last accessed 30/07/22). Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-ONQDLQuJ8 Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LElmfWbG6OY Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQH8A5P-lIg Part 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w2ihXrW2Xo Akayesu Judgment: Prosecutor vs Akayesu, 02/09/1998, ICTR-96-04, available at SELECTED DOCUMENTS (irmct.org) (last accessed 30/07/22). Author Alena Schröder |
Patricia Viseur Sellers
 Patricia Viseur Sellers*1954 “I think one of the issues with the intersectionality is, I’ve heard it waved as a banner but never implemented to its more profound meaning that there is not one woman alive who isn’t also from a class, who isn’t also from a race, who isn’t also from a nation or a culture or has an age […] and so it’s […] much better to really apply the [intersectionality] theory along with gender.”(Higgins, Rosalyn, Problems and Prospects: International Law and How We Use It, 1st edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1994)Life and Achievements Patricia Viseur Sellers was born in 1954 in the United States as the daughter of a US army officer and an elementary school teacher. She grew up in Camden (southern New Jersey) - a poor community with a predominantly African-American and Hispanic population. This made Sellers conscious of social and racial justice issues from an early age. To add to it her family encouraged conversations about these topics. Discussions about racial and social justice issues frequently came up at the Sellers' dinner table. Because of her father’s job in the army, she was able to learn languages in addition to English while living abroad, including Germany. Ever since Sellers was 12 years old, she wanted to become a lawyer and follow the examples of her African-American legal heroes such as Paul Robeson, Thurgood Marshall, and Charles Hamilton Houston. When Sellers started her undergrad at Rutgers University, she was part of the first class of women accepted at the university. During her time at Rutgers, Sellers volunteered with the American Friends Service Committee, traveling to Central and South America on human rights missions. In 1976 she graduated with a bachelor’s degree (BA) in political sciences and went on to study law at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was one of a small number of African-American students. In 1979 Sellers finished her law degree with a Juris Doctor (JD). After graduating, Sellers joined the Public Defender’s Office in Philadelphia. She predominately represented Black and Latin-American defendants as well as defendants from low-income communities. She valued her time as a public defender greatly as it enabled her to understand the intersection of race and economics within the US criminal justice system and to develop invaluable courtroom skills. Sellers also worked as a human rights project manager at the Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro during a time in which Brazil was transitioning from dictatorship to democracy. She oversaw the funding of human rights projects, namely those of Women’s NGOs, urban and rural poverty projects and projects related to the Maids Association of Brazil. From 1987 to 1989 Sellers worked as a staff accountant for the U.S. Tax Department in Brussels. As Directorate General of the Southeast Asia Division, Sellers worked for the European Commissioner for External Relations from 1990 to 1994.
Her consciousness for gender justice issues prompted her appointment as Legal Advisor for gender-related crimes to the Office of the Prosecutor for the newly established International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR). She held the position at the ICTY from 1994 to 2007 and at the ICTR from 1995 to 1999. Additionally, she was the acting head of the legal advisory section at the ICTY. As Legal Advisor for gender-related crimes, Sellers was entrusted with developing legal strategies that would enable the successful investigation and prosecution of sexual violence under the statutes of the ICTR and ICTY. After some time, Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone asked Sellers to also join the prosecutorial trial teams in cases related to sexual violence. Many of the Tribunals’ accomplishments are owed to the legal strategies Sellers helped develop. These strategies were crucial in charging perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence with crimes of international relevance and convicting them for War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Acts of Genocide. An important endeavor was resolving the gendered division of labour that pervaded the investigation teams. Since many of the investigators were men who at the domestic level were exclusively responsible for conducting murder investigations while their female colleagues conducted investigations of sexual violence, the initial investigations did not focus on sexual violence at all and could therefore not provide evidence. This would have made it impossible to charge and convict perpetrators of genocidal rape and sexual violence. Sellers and her colleague Nancy Patterson implemented guidelines on the gender composition of investigation teams and on identifying, deterring, and resolving sexual and moral harassment inside the Office of the Prosecutor. They set up an enforcement mechanism allowing complaints to be addressed. Including sexual violence in the investigations and more importantly, relating it to the other manifestations of Genocide was crucial in depicting the reality of the Genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. It helped highlight the intersection and interrelation between armed conflicts, sexual violence, and gender. Many cases are still remembered for their outstanding advances and for recognizing acts of sexual violence and rape as Torture, Enslavement, Persecution, and Genocidal Acts which was unprecedented.
In 2002 Sellers was Co-Prosecutor for a symbolic trial at the International Women’s Tribunal in Tokyo intended to redress the Sexual Slavery committed against thousands of “Comfort Women” by the Japanese army during World War II. She was also a Special Legal Advisor to UN Women - the Gender and Women’s Rights Division of the UNCHR - and the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict. In 2012 she was a member of an expert panel to review the UN Office of Internal Oversight which has initial investigative jurisdiction over the UN peacekeepers. As a sworn expert witness, she testified before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding issues of conflict-related sexual violence. The former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, appointed Patricia Viseur Sellers as her Special Advisor on Gender in 2017. Sellers worked on strengthening the Office of the Prosecutor’s response to sexual and gender-based violence under the Rome Statute and on improving investigation policies and prosecution strategies by integrating a gender-competent perspective into all areas of the work of the Office of the Prosecutor including recruitment. Since September 2021, Sellers is Special Advisor on Slavery Crimes to the current Prosecutor of the ICC - Mr. Karim A.A. Khan QC. Patricia Viseur Sellers has lectured and published extensively. She teaches international criminal law and human rights law as visiting fellow at Oxford University. She also teaches at the London School of Economics. Additionally, she is a senior research fellow at the Human rights centre of the University of California. Her achievements have been honoured with numerous awards. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in law by New York University in 2001 and the University of Pennsylvania made her an Honorary Fellow in 2006. References:
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Author Ann-Sophie Hartmann |
Julia Sebutinde
 Julia Sebutinde*28 February 1954 “Although I am a judge, I’m also a mother. I’m also a wife. I’m also somebody’s daughter. Do I put my human emotions in these cases? Are we not the human face of justice? I think we are.”Life, Achievements, and Impact Julia Sebutinde is a Ugandan jurist. Sebutinde studied law at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, in the 1970s. She also enrolled at the Edinburgh Law School, for her Master of Laws, graduating in 1991. In 1975, she attended the UN Decade for Women conference in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Seeing women promoting gender equality internationally, Sebutinde was inspired to take on a similar path. After her graduation, Sebutinde has served among other things in the Ugandan Ministry of Justice, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Commonwealth, and the Namibian Ministry of Justice. At the latter, she largely participated in drafting the treaty establishing the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. In 1996, Sebutinde was appointed as a judge at the High Court of Uganda, where she was tasked with battling corruption in the Ugandan police and security forces. From 2005 to 2011, Julia Sebutinde served as a judge at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. From 2007 to 2008 and from 2010 to 2011, she even served as the Trial Chamber II president. During her time there, she dealt with cases concerning the Sierra Leonean civil war, wherein non-State groups fought against the Sierra Leonean government. The case that concerned the criminal conduct of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who had supported the rebel groups, stood out. One of the trial’s focal points regarded the question of the scope of international criminal immunity of Heads of State, which had already arisen in the context of other international cases. The case concerning the criminal conduct of the rebel group ‘Armed Revolutionary Forces’ was an international premier. It was the first case that dealt with conduct that is now classified as forced marriage. The perpetrators had abducted Sierra Leonean women and girls and forced them to live with them as their wives. The women were regularly physically, mentally, and sexually abused, all while they were expected to do domestic tasks, raise children, and act like loving and loyal wives. Sebutinde participated in developing the notion of forced marriage as an international crime and sharpening its contours. Since 2012, she has been serving as a judge at the International Court of Justice and is the Court’s first female African judge. Sebutinde currently is in her second term as one of the four women among the Court’s 14 judges in 2022 and one of the five women in total appointed as judges in the Court’s history. When she was first elected judge, she aimed to build bridges with the Heads of State of African Nation states to form trust in the ICJ as a mechanism of peaceful dispute resolution, alternatively to war. This intention presumably influenced her Separate Opinion in the case concerning the Chagos Archipelago. The case regarded questions of self-determination and territorial integrity of the former British colony Mauritius. In contrast to the Court, Sebutinde strongly argued that the right to territorial integrity had acquired jus cogens status already in the 1960s. References
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Hauwa Ibrahim
 © photonews.at/Anna RauchenbergerburgHauwa Ibrahim*20 January 1968 "I was the rebel child; I was the black sheep of the family... I was rebellious on one hand, but on the other hand, I never left my culture. I never left the values of where I was brought up.1"Hauwa Ibrahim was born on 20 January 1968 in a rural village named Hinnah, in Northern Nigeria's Gombe State. She was raised as a Muslim, which would play a central role even in her legal career. Her story illustrates how exceptionally hard it can be for girls to acquire an education: Girls were not allowed to attend school after finishing elementary school in her village. They were expected to be ready for marriage at the age of twelve or thirteen. Her father refused to pay for more than primary school because he did not favour his daughters furthering their education. However, thanks to her mother, Hauwa Ibrahim was able to continue going to school, but she had to finance her education all by herself. Nevertheless, her mother still insisted that she married after graduation. Hauwa instead decided to attend a teacher’s college. This decision did not bode well with her family, who disowned her. This did not deter her from acquiring a variety of degrees: She earned a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Laws in International Law and Diplomacy from the University of Jos in Nigeria, as well as a Bachelor of Laws for Legal Practice from Nigeria Law School. Moreover, she obtained a Master of Laws in International Studies from the American University’s Washington College of Law. Like her academic journey, her first years as an attorney were not easy. She initially had no clients as people did not want to hire a female lawyer. Hauwa’s first day working as an attorney in court was also not trouble-free. She recalls that on her first case in 1999, the judges “did not want her to speak” because she was a woman. Today, she is especially known for her pro bono work defending people condemned under Sharia Law. One of her most well-known cases is the one of Amina Lawal, a woman sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery. In total, she has defended over 150 cases pro bono. Since someone’s life is at risk in most of her cases, she is willing to risk hers as well. She generally stresses how much she can relate to her clients, because they come from the same poor background as her and are voiceless, powerless, and often illiterate. Working in Sharia Courts requires a special set of skills, including cultural and religious knowledge. As a Muslim, Hauwa already possessed religious understanding, but she still needed to figure out ways to overcome the hurdles of the legal system. She captured the strategies she pursued in her book “Practicing Shariah Law: Seven Strategies for Achieving Justice in Shariah Courts,” which was published in 2012. As a recognition of her work, she was awarded the Sakharov Prize in 2005. Literature References: Hauwa Ibrahim, Practicing Shariah Law: Seven Strategies for Achieving Justice in Shariah Courts, Chicago 2012. Hauwa Ibrahim, Rule of Law Prevails in the Case of Amina Lawal, Human Rights Brief, Vol. 11 (2004), Issue 3. Rachel Gordon/Paula A. Johnson, Hauwa Ibrahim: What Route to Change, Harvard Global Health Institute, Women’s Health, 2016. Other Sources: https://thenationonlineng.net/how-i-saved-amina-lawal/ (last access: 22 March 2022), Abdulrafiu Lawal, How I saved Amina Lawal, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piOGC5jK51o&t=784s (last access: 22 March 2022), Humanising Shariah: Hauwa Ibrahim at TEDxHagueAcademy, 2014. Author Dimitra Tsiapli |
1 All direct quotations contained in this text have been translated by the author from the original German into English.
Calendar 2023
Olympe de Gouges
 © Alexander Kucharski/Bonarov/commons.wikimedia.org Olympe de GougesDate of Birth: 7 May 1748 Quote: "Man, are you capable of being fair? It is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to oppress my sex?" Olympe de Gouges was a feminist, abolitionist French playwright and political activist, who advocated for a marriage based on gender equality and publicly opposed slavery. In 1791, she published the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen”, challenging male authority, advocating for women’s entitlement to identical citizenship rights and in favor of those whom the original Declaration had failed to consider. Two years later, de Gouges was tried for treason and sent to the guillotine. Author |
Erna Scheffler
 ©Bundesarchiv, B 237 Bild-017, Fotograf: Müller, SimonErna SchefflerDate of Birth: 21 September 1893 Quote: „Personally, I am of the opinion that women must be represented in the Senate, because we as women have the same kind of mind as men, but sometimes other points of view seem important to us, and we sometimes value questions that are to be judged differently. Also, in connection with these different values, we women sometimes think of something that men do not think of.“ Erna Scheffler studied law in Munich, Berlin and Breslau, following which, she became an associate judge at the District Court of Berlin Mitte. In 1933, she was forced to leave this position by National Socialists on account of her father being Jewish, and her subsequent classification as „half-Jew”. She returned to her job in 1945 and became the first female judge at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany. Her activism for women’s rights is remembered to this day. Author Lilian Langer |
Hansa Mehta
 © The Maharaja Sayajirao University of BarodaHansa MehtaDate of Birth: 3 July 1897 Quote: ‘It is in the fitness of things that the first flag that will fly over this august house (of independent India) should be a gift from the women of India. We have … suffered and sacrificed for the cause of our country’s freedom. May this flag fly high and serve as a light in the gloom that threatens the world today. May it bring happiness to those who live under its protecting care.’
Hansa Mehta was an Indian feminist social reformer and educationist. She represented India at the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The change in the wording of Article 1 of the UDHR from ‘all men’ to ‘all human beings’ is attributed to her. She likewise led the group of women who participated in the drafting of the Constitution of India. Mehta was also the first woman vice-chancellor of a university in India and wrote more than twenty books, including theatre plays and stories. Author Kelly Amal Dhru |
Minerva Bernardino
 © UN Photo/ UN7617861 Minerva BernardinoDate of Birth: 7 May 1907 Quote: “You can call us ladies when you offer us a cup of coffee or tea, or ask us out to lunch; here, in this room, we are not ladies, we are delegates, and should be addressed accordingly.”
Minerva Bernardino was one of four women to sign the UN Charter in 1945. Besides being the Dominican Republic’s UN delegate, she fought for women’s and children’s rights, e.g., as president of the Inter-American Commission of Women and the UN Commission on the Status of Women, as well as vice-president of UNICEF. When drafting the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she advocated for the gender-inclusive formulation “equal rights of men and women”. Author Leonard Amaru Feil |
Nicole Fontaine
 © Europäisches ParlamentNicole FontaineDate of Birth: 16 January 1942 Quote: “One of the key features of this new collective European consciousness is an ethical vision of the Union. Today, it is vitally important for Europe that it should no longer simply be an economic power.” A pioneer for a citizens’ Europe, Nicole Fontaine served as second female President of the European Parliament from 1999-2002, promoting a Union that considers the concerns of people, a commitment which is also reflected in her signing of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in 2000. Fontaine, born in the Normandy in 1942, studied law, and - following her political career - held the Jean Monnet Chair at University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. She was also an Affiliate Professor at ESCP Europe. Author Franziska Bachmann |
Edith Brown Weiss
 © Max Koot Studio/Den Haag, NetherlandsEdith Brown WeissDate of Birth: 19 February 1942 Quote: “We can no longer ignore the effects of our actions on future generations. Yet future generations are not represented in the decisions we make today. The principle of intergenerational equity – fairness to future generations – is central to the Anthropocene and to our […] world.” Edith Brown Weiss received her Ph.D. from Berkeley University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. In 1978 she became the Francis Cabell Brown Professor of International Law at Georgetown University. She was the first female chairperson on the World Bank’s Inspection Panel and the Associate General Counsel for International Law at the U.S. EPA, where she established the international law division. Author Christian Raby |
Taghreed Hikmat
 © Jordan News AgencyTaghreed HikmatDate of Birth: 25 December 1945 Quote: “There is no healing without peace. No peace without justice. No justice without respect of human rights.” Taghreed Hikmat started to work as a lawyer in 1982. In 1998, she became Jordan’s first female judge. From 2003 to 2011 she served as a judge at the International Criminal Court for Rwanda, being the first female Arab judge in international criminal justice. She is acclaimed for fighting gender-based and domestic violence, sexual and child abuse, for which she received the UN Human Rights Prize. Author Julia Lips |
Hillary Charlesworth
 © United Nations Hillary CharlesworthDate of Birth: 28 February 1955 Quote: “There has been some success in having the vocabulary introduced but […] this is actually delivered in very little change […]. And in a way institutions of international law have been remarkably successful […] in absorbing an apparently radical vocabulary but stripping it actually of all radical potential.” Hillary Charlesworth – a judge at the International Court of Justice since November 2021 – is widely known as one of the authors of the seminal article Feminist Approaches on International Law. This paved the path for a new discipline in international law and was followed by a subsequent monograph, The Boundaries of International Law. Although often associated with feminism, she is foremost an international lawyer with an interest in human rights, war and peace, and the international legal system. Author Lauritz Wilde |
Unity Dow
 © PopTech 2011/Camden Maine USA/ Kris KrüUnity DowDate of Birth: 23 April 1959 Quote: “The language of law is very masculine. The culture of law is so masculine. At one point, I started to think that it shouldn’t be like this and that I have a right to be where I am.” After graduation, Unity Dow opened the first all-women law firm in Botswana and served as Botswana’s first female High Court judge before entering politics and becoming a visiting professor, novelist, and human rights activist. Three landmark cases marked her legal career: the right of the indigenous Basarwa to return to their ancestral lands, the abolition of gender discrimination in Botswana citizenship, and the registration of the LEGABIBO as an organization. Author Marie Siegemund |
Nazhat Shameem Khan
 © UNclimatechange CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Nazhat Shameem KhanDate of Birth: 1960 Quote: “I believed, and I still believe, that the law is an instrument for transforming social and institutional norms, values and structures.” Throughout her career, Nazhat Shameem Khan was a trailblazing figure. She was the first President of the UN Human Rights Council from a Small Island Developing State. In Fiji, she was the first female Director of Public Prosecutions and the first woman to be appointed as a High Court Judge. In these positions, she addressed institutional gender bias, advocated for the rights of island nations and highlighted the connections between climate change and human rights. She is currently Deputy Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Author Paulina Maria Schiefelbein |
Fatou Bensouda
 © Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office CC BY 2.0Fatou BensoudaDate of Birth: 31 January 1961 Quote: “Peace and justice should not be seen as mutually exclusive. And we also need to remember that there cannot be peace, really, without justice.” Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda obtained the position of Minister of Justice and Attorney General in the Gambia before continuing her career at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC). As Prosecutor of the ICC (2012 – 2021), she defended the Court against international criticism and fought relentlessly for justice and accountability, despite being sanctioned by the USA when she started to investigate their involvement in Afghanistan. Author Alena Schröder |
Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson
 © H2rty CC BY 2.0 Ketanji Onyika Brown JacksonDate of Birth: 7 May 1748 Quote: „[…] I take my responsibilities very seriously. […] I’m a mom and a real person and a wife and doing the best that I can. Judges are human beings. We have a duty that we focus on and that we take seriously. And it’s hard because the nature of our work involves resolving disputes, so someone is always going to be disappointed, someone’s going to lose. But in our society, we’ve agreed that this is the way in which disputes get resolved. We’ve agreed on the process. And I’m so honored to be a part of that.“
In 2022, Jackson was appointed to the US Supreme Court, thereby becoming the first black woman and former federal public defender to do so. She began her legal career as a law clerk, following which she worked for various law firms, as well as serving as an assistant federal public defender. She was later assigned the position of vice chair to the US Sentencing Commission. Before her appointment as Associate Justice, Jackson served as a District and Circuit Judge. Author Ann-Sophie Hartmann |
Calendar 2024
Christine de Pizan
 © Kelson/commons.wikimedia.orgChristine de PizanDate of Birth: September 1364 Quote: “Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.” Christine de Pizan was a virtuous and versatile court writer, author and poet. She began writing after her husband’s death to support her three children and mother. Her ingenuity found expression in literary, historical, political and philosophical works, including early feminist writings, such as “The Book of the City of Ladies”, a description of women’s significant contributions to society. Her work “The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry” is one of the first known literature dedicated at the law of war, earning her the title “Mother of International Law”. Author |
Anna Julia Cooper
 © C. M. Bell Studio Collection (Library of Congress), https://www.loc.gov/item/2016702852Anna Julia CooperDate of Birth: 10 August 1858 Quote: Let our girls know that we expect something more of them than that they merely look pretty and appear well in society… Not the boys less but the girls more. Anna Julia Cooper was born into bondage in North Carolina, USA, in 1858. She was the fourth African American woman to obtain a doctorate degree and went on to become an author, teacher, and activist. Her book “A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South” is known to be one of the first articulations of Black feminism; demonstrating the complex intersection between gender, race, and class. Author Julia Clara Lips |
E. Tendayi Achiume
 © MacArthur Foundation, https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2023/e-tendayi-achiumeE. Tendayi AchiumeYear of Birth: 1982 Quote: “We must connect legal and power centers to those living on the front lines of racial subordination, those living the violence of borders. Their knowledge and experiences should be informing the policy that governs their lives.” Advocating for international refugee law and the enduring impact of colonialism on migration, Tendayi Achiume became the first female UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Her global work includes being a law professor at UCLA, an associate professor at Pretoria University and a research associate at both the African Centre for Migration and Society and the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre. Author Marie Siegemund |
Louise Weiss
 © European Union 2023 – Source: European ParliamentLouise WeissDate of Birth: January 25, 1893 Date of Death: May 26, 1983 Quote: “[H]ow could I accept the ordinariness of a family life? What a defeat!...The alternative before me: to devour the planet or devour myself.” (Source: Memoirs of Louise Weiss) Witnessing the horrors of WWI, Louise Weiss set out to make war on war by becoming a journalist focusing on international affairs and the pursuit of peace. She founded La Femme Nouvelle to fight for women's rights to vote. During WWII, being Jewish herself, she helped to organize a passive civil defense for women against air raids. In 1979, she was elected to the first European Parliament and gave its inaugural speech. Author Christian Raby |
Bertha Lutz
 © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016839665Bertha LutzDate of Birth: 2 August 1894Quote: “I come more and more to the conclusion that no civilization is possible without women very decisively in public affairs.” (Lutz to Williams, March 1, 1938, WP) Bertha Lutz was a renowned scientist in the field of herpetology - the study of frogs -, a women's rights activist, a politician at national and a diplomat at international level. She was one of the first women elected to the Brazilian parliament and one of four women to sign the UN Charter. Together with Minerva Bernardino, she is credited with including the word "women" in the preamble to the Charter and laying the foundation for the Commission on the Status of Women. Author Lauritz Wilde |
Hélène Cazes Benatar
 © American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives – Item ID 27107 – Reference Code NY_16211 Hélène Cazes BenatarDate of Birth: 27 October 1898 Quote: “At no moment did I consider the persons protected by us as material for calculations and statistics, but always took care of their needs, regarding them as human beings and persecuted persons with the right to all care and attention from our department. […]“ (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, G45-54, FR007/0841, as cited in Miller, Years of Glory, 2021, 153) Moroccan Jewish lawyer and activist Hélène Cazes Benatar grew up in Tangier and later moved to Casablanca. Already a wife and mother, she obtained her law degree from the University of Bordeaux. Following the outbreak of WWII, she instituted the Committee for Assistance to Foreign Refugees collaborating with aid organizations to provide support for refugees fleeing from Europe to North Africa and continued to work with the JDC after the war. She eventually resumed her legal profession, first in Casablanca and then Paris. She passed there in 1979. Sources Susan Gilson Miller, Hélène Cazes Benatar, in: The Shalvi / Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Jewish Women’s Archive, available at https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/benatar-helene-cazes (last accessed 2 November 2023) Susan Gilson Miller, Years of Glory, Nelly Benatar and the Pursuit of Justice in Wartime in North Africa, SUP 2021 Michal Ben Ya'akov, Cazès-Benathar, Hélène, in: Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1878-9781_ejiw_SIM_000660 (last accessed 30 October 2023) Yitzhak Gershon (traduit de l’hébreu par Claire Drevon), L’aide aux réfugiés juifs du Maroc pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, dans: Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah 2016/2 (no 205), pp. 413-446 Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (eds), The Holocaust and North Africa, pp. 155-156, 193, 200, 225 Author Franziska Bachmann |
Annie Ruth Jiagge
 © Peter Williams/WCC Archives, A05042-13Annie Ruth JiaggeDate of Birth: 7 October 1918 Quote: „Injustice eats me internally. I get very restless when I come in touch with it.” Jiagge was Ghana’s first female lawyer and the first female judge in Ghana and the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1980, she became the first female president of Ghana’s highest court. As principal drafter of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and co-founder of the organization that became Women’s World Banking, Jiagge was an exceptional force in advancing women’s rights. Her activism included serving the World Council of Churches in the fight against racism and apartheid in South Africa. Author Ann-Sophie Hartmann |
Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit
 © Joachim LochLore Maria Peschel-GutzeitDate of Birth: 26 October 1932 † 2 September 2023 Quote: ”As far as the legal, political and social position of women in Germany goes, there have been many well needed improvements. However, the result is still not good (enough). Much remains to be done for future generations of women and men.“ Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit worked as a judge, lawyer and Senator of Justice in Hamburg and Berlin. She fought for the introduction of part-time work and family leave for female civil servants, which was introduced in 1968 and has been called "Lex Peschel" ever since. She was also involved in the expansion of Art. 3 para. 2 of the German Constitution, which states that "the state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist." Author Lilian Langer |
Jutta Limbach
 © Goethe-Institut/Antje MeinenJutta LimbachDate of Birth: 27 March 1934 Quote: "Women have a self-evident right in our constitutional state to be employed and to hold public office in the same manner as the male sex." In 1994, Limbach was the first woman to be appointed president of the German Federal Constitutional Court, serving until 2002. She began her political career as Senator of Justice for the State of Berlin. As member of a 1992 Constitutional Commission set up after Germanys reunification, she achieved a reform of Art. 3 para. 2 of the German Constitution, which today not only guarantees same rights for men and women but also obligates the state to take positive actions to eliminate existing disadvantages. Author Friederike Löbbert |
Sujata Vasant Manohar
Sujata Vasant ManoharDate of Birth: 28 August 1934 Quote: Gender equality is an aspect of Rule of Law because Rule of Law is rule of just law. Laws that do not discriminate on grounds of race, religion, gender, caste or any other irrelevant ground. Rule of law entails enforcement of human rights for all human beings so that all can live a life with dignity Born on 28th August 1934 and educated at Elphinstone, Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, Sujata Vasant Manohar was the first lady Chief Justice of Bombay and Kerala High Court. From 1994 to 1999, she was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of India, where she delivered landmark decisions on women‘s rights, including the decision incorporating the provisions of CEDAW into enforceable Indian law. She became a member of the National Human Rights Commission, and in 2021, was awarded the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal of Honour. Author Kelly Amal Dhru |
Yayori Matsui
 © Women‘s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM)Yayori MatsuiDate of Birth: 12 April 1961 † 27 December 2002 Quote: “My life has been a life of action propelled by outrage and anger against injustice. I have been offered no official or social status of power, and I take that as an honour.” Yayori Matsui was a Japanese journalist for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun and a feminist activist focusing on sexual violence, sex tourism and the exploitation of sex workers in East Asia. Her work led to the establishment of the Women’s International Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery in 2000, a people’s tribunal created to prosecute crimes committed against the so called “comfort women” who were enslaved and raped by the Japanese military in WWII. Author Alena Schröder |
Paula Escarameia
 © Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, https://4genderjustice.orgPaula EscarameiaDate of Birth: 1 June 1960 Quote: "I have faith in a future where there will be a more equitable distribution, and where people will take more pleasure in contributing to a better world […] than in buying a fur coat or a luxury car they don't need." A mentor and advocate, Paula Escarameia’s legacy extends beyond victories in courtrooms, inspiring the next generation of legal minds. With a career over decades, she earned global acclaim for her expertise in Public International Law. She was also the first woman and the first Portuguese person to join the United Nations International Law Commission in 2002. She embodies a tireless defender of Women’s Human Rights, and her precision, dedication, and unwavering commitment to justice were extraordinary. Author Vanessa Domingues |