Thammasat University students interested in law, history, gender studies, political science, sociology, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 3 February online webinar on Gender and the international judge: misfits on the bench.
The event, on Friday, 3 February 2023 at 8pm Bangkok time, is organized by the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, the United Kingdom.
The TU Library collection includes many books about different aspects of gender and judging.
The speaker will be Associate Professor Loveday Hodson who teaches at the School of Law, The University of Leicester, the United Kingdom.
Books written and coedited by Dr. Hodson, including Feminist judgments in international law and NGOs and the struggle for human rights in Europe as well as Research methods for international human rights law: beyond the traditional paradigm are accessible to TU students through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.
Here is the description of the event from its faculty webpage announcement:
Lecture summary: It is widely recognised that there is a dearth of women judges sitting on international courts and tribunals. In this lecture, particular attention will be paid to the question of why the lack of judicial parity matters. It will be argued that the dearth of women judges is both symptom and cause of the highly gendered way in which international law and international institutions operate. The idea of the totemic judge of international law whose male gender is rendered invisible and unremarked and who functions to enrobe the gendered norms and institutions of international law will be called forth. The female judge, conversely, is presented as a disruptive force whose very presence serves to place gender in the frame. Drawing on accounts from international courts and from the Feminist Judgments in International Law project, it will be concluded that an approach to judging that acknowledges and challenges structures of power – including gender – contains considerable transformative potential.
Students are invited to register online at this link:
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ew6SDMy-SOG_kbzBCBlnQg
In 2013, a blog, X. and Others v Austria, by Dr. Hodson was posted online:
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has this week issued another important judgment on sexual orientation discrimination in the area of family life, specifically addressing the adoption of a child by a ‘second parent’ in a same-sex relationship.
The applicants in X and Others v Austria were a child – unnamed in the judgment, so let’s name him ‘Sam’ – and his two lesbian mums. Their straightforward argument was that Austrian law discriminated against their family because while it provided for ‘second parent’ adoption in the case of unmarried and married opposite-sex couples, it made no such provision for same-sex couples. It perhaps goes without saying that marriage is not extended to same-sex couples in Austria; registered partners, while able to adopt as individuals, are specifically excluded from joint and second-parent adoption. In short, one of Sam’s mothers had no possibility of establishing a legally-recognised relationship with him, at least not without severing his ties with his biological mother. For the applicants, this exclusion was a non-sense that belied the reality of their day-to-day family life. Sam – aged about twelve when this application was submitted to the Court – had been cared for by both his mums since he was about five years old. Perhaps understandably, the applicants’ argued was that it was not in Sam’s best interests to have his relationship of care left unrecognised.
Although the applicants presented a compelling case, their arguments took the Court into unchartered territory. While it has long maintained a strong stance towards discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, the Court has also referred a number of times to the protection of the ‘traditional family’ as a ‘weighty and legitimate reason which might justify a difference in treatment’. Consequently, the Court’s approach to LGBT families has been somewhat inconsistent and fretful. In E.B. v France, for example, the complaint by a woman in a stable same-sex relationship about a refusal for authorization to adopt a child as a single person (authorization that was in theory open to any unmarried person) was upheld on the basis that it was discriminatory; however, in Gas and Dubois v France the Court held that refusal of authorization for a ‘second-parent’ in a same-sex relationship to adopt her partner’s biological child was not a violation of the Convention as second-parent adoption was not open to any unmarried person under French law. Austrian law was also arguably not incompatible with the loosely-worded European Convention on the Adoption of Children (revised 2008), which merely ‘permits’ States to extend adoption laws to same-sex couples in registered partnerships and unmarried couples in a stable relationship. At the time the case was before the Grand Chamber, only eleven Council of Europe states had extended second-parent adoption to same-sex couples, with most States reserving it for married couples; conversely, only five Council of Europe States allow unmarried second-parents to adopt but did not extend that provision to unmarried same-sex couples.
In 2011, Dr. Hodson published an article in Human Rights Law Review published by Oxford University Press: A Marriage by Any Other Name? Schalk and Kopf v Austria.
The article began:
In Schalk and Kopf v Austria1 the First Section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or ‘the Court’) had the opportunity to reflect upon the impact of recent developments across Europe extending marriage rights to same-sex couples and/or granting them some other form of legal recognition on its interpretation of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR or ‘the Convention’). The Court rejected the applicants’ argument that Austria was obliged to provide their same-sex relationship with legal recognition, whether through marriage or some other institution. Nevertheless, as it made a number of important observations concerning the nature of States’ obligation in this regard, this case is a significant milestone in the Court’s jurisprudence. In fact, Schalk and Kopf raises so many important issues that, as Thienel observes, it is surprising that the Chamber did not relinquish its jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber. It is equally surprising and disappointing that the Grand Chamber recently rejected the applicants’ request for a referral. Nevertheless, this judgment undoubtedly heralds theçsomewhat faltering start of a more robust engagement by the Court with the increasingly pressing issue of same-sex relationships.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)