Women Judges Flashcards
1st woman appointed to supreme court
Bertha Wilson
If you think women judges will make a difference you must either think…
- judges don’t need to be impartial
2. “impartiality” has not been true before now
What does Bertha Wilson believe?
impartiality has not been true before now
- can’t replace men’s bias with women’s bias
- judges should use both ethics of care and ethics of justice,consider details and context
pyrrhic victory
- won battle but lost war
- if only women judges care about women’s issues
Lavelle- trial court
-expert testimony admissible, Lavelle acquitted
Lavelle- appeal
- Manitoba court of appeal
- ordered new trial with no expert testimony
Lavelle- SC ruling
- if it’s a grey area of course you should alow expert testimony
- battered woman does not equal “reasonable man”
Limitations of Lavalle
- no singe “women’s experience”
- context more than gender, race ignored (indigenous women’s imprisonment
Who was the second woman appointed to supreme court?
Claire L’Heureux-Dube
Claire L’Heureux-Dube
- writes her own dissenting decisions
- no one type of difference matters
Sheilah Martin
- 9th woman appointed to supreme court
- “woman as lawmakers” = pervasiveness of sexism
Maryka Omatsu
- NOT a supreme court judge
- 1st East Asian Woman to become a judge in Canada
- “fiction of judicial impartiality”
Suspensions
- Judge Bernd Zabel “make America Great Again” (internal regulation, 1 month suspension)
- secretive- on what standard are they judged?
Disbench
- removal, asked to resign
- Justice Robin Camp (aka judge knees together- humiliated complainant and referred to her as accused in sexual assault trial)
Assimilation
Why should marginalized people HAVE to be judges? Why should the burden fall on them to learn the law of the colonizers?
