Sponsored by the International Law Association (ILA) British Branch, as part of the Regional Seminar Series
A Fireside Chat with Dr Jessica Lynn Corsi: Feminism, Gender Parity, and the bench of the International Court of Justice
4 November, 4pm
Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security
University of Glasgow
Dr Jessica Lynn Corsi is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Working Group on Gender Parity for the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Working Group takes a transformative equality, human rights approach to gender parity for the ICJ bench. It notes women and all people’s equal and inclusive right to participate in the ICJ judiciary, and the human rights obligation to remedy the ICJ bench’s historical and ongoing overrepresentation of one gender.
This talk will place the human rights-based approach to judicial gender parity in conversation with related objectives, such as promoting feminist judges and feminist judging. Critiques arise that focusing on women’s empanelment overlooks that women judges may undermine rather than promote gender equality, and that emphasising women’s equal and inclusive right to participate in the ICJ judiciary overlooks important intersectional issues. This discussion proposes that an international human rights framework can address these concerns. It suggests that the fundamental human right to equal and inclusive participation in decision making complements rather than undermines additional human rights approaches to feminist judging and intersectional equality.
In this fireside chat, Dr Corsi invites discussion on how the important goal of feminist judging can be addressed via the obligation on all judges to apply the law equally and without discrimination, necessitating a so-called ‘gender sensitive’ approach. Similarly, transformative equality obligates judges to centre marginalised gender issues. Ultimately, the complementary human rights obligations of gender parity in judicial empanelment and the requirement for gender sensitive, feminist judging should not be pitted against each other. Practically, it could work best to address parity in decision making and gender equality obligations when judging as separate but related human rights obligations.
