Board of Directors

Asia & South Pacific

• Hon. Margaret Beazley
  New South Wales Court of Appeal
  Sydney, Australia
  

Justice Beazley is the third most senior judge in New South Wales, as a member of the New South Wales Court of Appeal since 1996. She was a judge of the Federal Court of Australia from 1993 to 1996 and a judge of the Industrial Relations Court from 1994 to 1996. Justice Beazley was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia in the Queens' Birthday Honours List on 12 June 2006 for service to the judiciary and the law, particularly through contributions to professional and ethical standards, to the advancement of women in the legal profession and the community. In 2008, Justice Beazley was conferred with a Doctor of Laws honoris causa by the University of Sydney. Her Honour presently is Chair, NSW Chapter, Australian Institute Administrative Law; Executive Committee Member of the Judicial Conference of Australia; Chair, Women's Advisory Network of the National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre; Secretary, Executive Committee, Australian Association of Women Judges; Member, Planning Committee, International Association of Women Judges; Member, Board of Governors, Queenwood School for Girls; and Advisory Board Member, Centre for Children and Young People, Southern Cross University and is a frequent guest speaker and presenter at conferences throughout Australia. Justice Beazley graduated LLB (Honours) from the University of Sydney in 1974, was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1975 and appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1989. She was a Judicial Member of the Equal Opportunity Tribunal (1984-1988); Acting District Court Judge (1990, 1991) and Assistant Commissioner, ICAC (1991-1992). Her Honour was previously Member, Advisory Group to the Australian Law Reform Commission on "Review of the Adversarial System in Litigation"; Member, Advisory Board for the Centre for Judicial Research; National Committee Member, Union Internationale des Advocats; Chairperson, Bar Council Law Reform Committee (1991); Chairperson, Federal Law Liaison Committee (1990, 1991); Member, Law Council Company Committee (1991, 1991); Member, Bar Council (1989-1992); and Chair, Advisory Committee, "Equality Before the Law Bench Book", Judicial Commission of New South Wales.


• Hon. You-sook Min
  Seoul District Court
  Seoul, Republic of Korea
  
  Judge You-sook Min received her LL.B. degree in 1987 from Seoul National University, and LL.M degree (Master of Law) in 1992 from Seoul National University College of Law, the most prestigious law school in Korea. She passed the National Judicial Examination in 1987, and completed two-year training at The National Judicial Research and Training Institute. [The Korean judiciary has a unique circular career system: Judges serve as District Court Associate Judges, and then Appellate Court Associate Judges, and then Supreme Court Research Judges, and then District Court Presiding Judges, and then Appellate Court Presiding Judges, and finally Supreme Court justices.]
  
  She was appointed to the post of Associate Judge of Incheon District Court and started her career as a judge in 1989. During serving as a judge, she went abroad on a government scholarship and earned her LL.M. degree at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC, in 1999. She served as an Associate Judge of Seoul High (Appellate) Court in 2001. She served as a Research Judge at the Supreme Court from 2002 to 2006. She is currently serving as a Presiding Judge at Seoul District Court. During her 22-year career as a judge, she has dealt both civil and criminal cases. She has written many articles (including a master's thesis) on Family Law. In 2002, her paper entitled, "Division of Property at Divorce", was selected as "the paper of the year" by The Korean Legal Center.

Africa

• Hon. Joyce Aluoch (Kenya)
  International Criminal Court
  The Hague, Netherlands


Judge Aluoch was elected to the International Criminal Court in January 2009 and began serving a nine year term in March 2009 assigned to the Trial Division.. Previously, she was a judge of the High Court of Kenya for over 20 years, and was elevated to the Court of Appeal, Kenya in December 2008. She was also an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. As a senior judge and vice-chairperson of the Judicial Curriculum Review Committee she had extensive experience in the training of judges, magistrates and paralegals in the provision of regional and international human rights instruments, a programme she undertook in conjunction with the International Association of Women Judges. Judge Aluoch also contributed to promoting the rights of the child, as chair of the African Union Committee of Experts on the Rights of the Child, preparing the rules of practice and procedure for the committee as well as guidelines for initial reporting to the African Committee by Member States of the African Union. Special missions undertaken by Judge Aluoch include negotiations undertaken on behalf of the African Union with the Government of Sudan to ratify the African charter to secure the rights of children, and a fact finding mission to the war-torn northern Uganda to report on the effects of the war on children. She also served for six years as vice-chair and member of the UN Committee on the Right and Welfare of the Child and was in the process of chairing a task-force for the implementation of the new Sexual Offences Act, 2006 aimed at developing a national policy frame work and a national action plan for handling sexual offences in Kenya. She is currently serving a two-year term as a regional director on the IAWJ's Board of Directors.


• Hon. Florence R. Arrey
  U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
  Buea, Cameroon


Judge Florence Rita Arrey, born in 1948, has worked for more than 30 years at the national and international levels advocating Human Rights, campaigning for the rights of women and girls as well as combating domestic violence against women and children. Since October 2003, Florence Rita Arrey has been a Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda adjudicating cases of genocide before the Tribunal. Prior to her appointment at the UN Tribunal based in Arusha, Tanzania, she was Judge on the Cameroonian Supreme Court. Before this, she served as Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals for several years, the first Cameroonian woman to hold the post. Having studied law at the University of Lagos in Nigeria and the University of London, she went on to obtain a Diploma in Magistracy in Cameroon. She has attended many conferences on criminal justice, international law and women's rights. She is a member of several law associations such as the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association and Society for the Reform of Criminal Law. She is also President of the Cameroonian chapter of the International Association of Women Judges.

Central & South America

• Hon. Joan Charles
  Judiciary of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
  CITY, Trinidad and Tobago
  
  

• Hon. Christina Leiva
  Ministry Superior Tribunal Posadas, Argentina

North America

• Hon. Lucie A. LaVigne
  Court of Queens Bench of New Brunswick
  Edmundston, Canada
  
  Madame Justice Lucie A. LaVigne was appointed to the Court of Queen's Bench of New Brunswick, Canada, in June 2001. She presides over criminal jury trials as well as other criminal, civil and appellate matters. Before her appointment to the bench, she was in private practice for more than twenty years, specializing in family law. She has been an active member of the Canadian Chapter of the International Association of Women Judges since 2001 and served as President of the CCIAWJ in 2008-2009. She has attended the IAWJ's Biennial Conferences in Uganda, Sydney, Panama and South Korea. She chaired the CCIAWJ's National Conference in Ottawa, Canada in 2009. In May 2010 she was elected to serve on the IAWJ Board of Directors as a representative of the North American Region. Justice LaVigne is married to Paul Albert and they have two daughters.
  
  
• Hon. Sue Pai Yang
  NJ Workers Compensation Court
  Newark, NJ, U.S.A.

Judge Sue Pai Yang became the first Asian American to be appointed by a Governor of New Jersey to be a Workers' Compensation Judge in 2002. She presently sits in Newark hearing cases involving workplace injuries. Her prior legal experience include clerking for the Honorable Marilyn Loftus in the Essex County Superior Court, then serving as a Deputy Attorney General of New Jersey before starting her own general practice law firm with several associates. Judge Yang received her B.S. from the University of Maryland with High Honors, M.S. from Cornell University and J.D. from Rutgers Law School, Newark where she was an editor of Law Review. Active in the legal community, Judge Yang was the founding President of the Asian Pacific American Lawyers Association of New Jersey, a founder and board member of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association and was the first Asian American elected to the Board of Trustees of the New Jersey State Bar Association. Leadership roles held by Judge Yang in the National Association of Women Judges includes being District 3 Director (covering New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Virgin Island), Chair of the International Judges Committee of the NAWJ 2007 Conference, member of the Nomination Committee, International Director and Chair of the 2011 NAWJ National Conference. She previously served on the National Board of Girl Scouts U.S.A. and presently serves on the Board of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the IAWJ Board of Directors as an elected representative of the North American Region. Judge Yang is listed in Who's Who in American Law and has two daughters, Arlene and Jenny Yang, who have followed her into the legal profession.

Europe & Middle East

• Hon. Marianne de Rooij
  Court of First Instance Amsterdam
  Amsterdam, Netherlands
  

Judge Marianne de Rooij is the vice-president of the District Court of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. She received her LL.M. degree at Amsterdam University in 1973. Before being appointed to the Court of Social Security and Civil Service Tribunal in 1985, she was a partner in a women's law firm in Amsterdam, specializing in discrimination and gender cases. In 1994, she was appointed vice-president of the District Court, the court of first instance in Amsterdam. During her 25-year career as a judge, she has dealt both civil and administrative law cases. Her professional experience includes working as a coordinating judge for SSR, the Netherlands training institute for the judiciary in Zutphen. From 1999 till 2001 she was the project leader at the court in Amsterdam of the Netherlands court-annexed mediation project. Judge De Rooij is a very experienced trainer in judicial skills: how to conduct a hearing trial, control of courtroom, judgment writing and giving reasons, admitting evidence, administering natural justice, due process and fair trial, protecting human rights and civil liberties, resolving disputes and alternative dispute resolution (ADR). From 2002 she is in charge of education and professional training for candidates and sitting judges. In this capacity she formed partnerships with other courts and universities for curriculum development and other aspects of effective knowledge management. Her interest is in mainstreaming gender and multicultural perspectives into legal education. In November 2007, a major law journal (the Nederlands Juristenblad) published her article entitled, "A Woman is the Judge." The article describes the changing position of women judges in the Netherlands in the sixty years since the first appointment of a female judge in 1947.

She has attended the IAWJ's Biennial Conferences in Uganda, Sydney and in Panama. In March 2008 she was elected to serve on the IAWJ Board of Directors as a representative of Europe and the Middle East . She was reelected at the conference in Seoul in 2010. Judge De Rooij is married to Jan Westhoff, - who is a judge too - and they have two sons.


• Hon. Maureen Roddy
  Civil Justice Center
  Manchester, United Kingdom