Delaney Co-Edits Book on Female Chief Justices

GCDC Director Erin Delaney (UCL Laws) and Rosalind Dixon (UNSW Syndey) have recently published a new volume on female chief justices. The book, entitled Elgar Companion to Female Chief Justices in Comparative Perspective (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026), investigates the role of female judicial leaders of courts worldwide, by exploring their contributions to constitutional guardianship as well as feminist institutional and jurisprudential change.

The Co-Editors have authored an introduction to the book providing comparative and conceptual reflections on female judicial leadership. They highlight two key questions the book explores: ‘(i) the role of female chief justices in promoting constitutional democracy and the rule of law, and related values such as transparency, independence, impartiality; and (ii) the role of female chief justices in promoting feminist institutional and/or jurisprudential outcomes.’

The introduction is followed by five parts. Part I focuses on selected feminist jurisprudential leaders and features contributions from Silvia Suteu, Vicki C Jackson, Lisa-Marie Lührs, Samira Akbarian, Rosemary Hunter, Erika Rackley, and Anna Dziedzic. Part II discusses institutional reform, with contributions from Victoria Miyandazi, Anchinesh Shiferaw, Clíodhna Ní Chéileachair, Janina Boughey, Lynsey Blayden, Gabrielle Appleby, Heather Roberts, David Kosař, and Katarína Šipulová. Part III explores responses to constitutional crises, with chapters from Mariana Velasco-Rivera, Yvonne Tew, Jeong-In Yun, Elisabeth Perham, Jessica Kerr, Tracy Robinson, and Emily Sanchez Salcedo. Part IV, on leadership styles, sees chapters from Vanessa A MacDonnell, Gabrielle Appleby, Sarah Murray, Diletta Tega, Tania Groppi, Maartje De Visser, and Elaine Mak. The final part considers what happens in the absence or silence of a female chief justice. Mathilde Cohen, Dipika Jain, Marianne González Le Saux, Marcela Prieto Rudolphy, Cathi Albertyn, Elsje Bonthuys, and Leticia RC Kreuz contribute to this part.

The volume has received critical acclaim for its insightful contributions. Judith Resnik (Yale Law School) remarked, this ‘volume of grounded analyses enables insights into how, when, and why gender matters for courts and for the populations they serve’. Mark Tushnet (Harvard Law School) added, ‘this collection offers food for thought about what differences occur when women—and feminists, not always the same—take leadership roles on high courts, including differences in what leadership actually consists of’.

The book is available on the Edward Elgar website.

Cover image by GCDC member Carey Young (UCL Fine Art), a still from her 2023 video Appearance. The piece – a silent, cinematic work – features 15 diverse female judges, showing the interaction between their institutional authority and their varied individual personalities. Appearance seeks to unsettle conventional notions of power relations and challenge patriarchal framings of law. More information is available on Carey Young’s website.