Women Chief Justices

Salifou Fatimata Bazeye is a Nigerien jurist who was the President of the Supreme Court of Niger from 2007 to 2009. She was born in 1951 in Dosso, Niger. She was educated at Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature de Paris in France in 1979. Once she received her degree, she returned to Niger to work as a Magistrate. She worked as a Magistrate until 2005 serving on the different local courts before moving to the Court of Appeals. In 2005, she became a member of the Supreme Court. Following her work on the Supreme Court, she was nominated to the Constitutional Court in 2007 and elected President of the Constitutional Court by the members. She served her term from 2007 until 2009, when the President of Niger, Mamadou Tandja, chose to retire the Constitution and dismiss the Constitutional Court. Mamadou Tandja dissolved the court once they prevented him from serving a third term. Once Mamadou Tandja was overthrown in a military coup in 2010, Bazeye was named as head of the Constitutional Council, a High Court made for the transition of Niger. On the Constitutional Council, she steered Niger for a democratic transition until she left the court in 2013. Bazeye was chosen as the African of the year in 2011 for her incorruptibility.

Georgina Wood was the first woman Chief Justice of Ghana, appointed in 2007. Georgina Wood was born in 1947 in Ghana. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Ghana, Legon in 1970, before going to law school at Ghana School of Law and graduating in 1972. For her first professional role, Georgina Wood served as a Public Prosecutor and Deputy Superintendent in the Police Service for three years after she had trained with the Ghana Police Service in a post-graduate officers training course. Following this position, she was appointed as a Magistrate of the District Court in 1974. This role initiated her ascent in the judicial sector until she eventually reached the Supreme Court in Ghana. She was nominated as a candidate for Chief Justice in Ghana by the President in 2002 but declined the nomination for unknown reasons. By 2003, she was appointed as a justice of the Supreme Court of The Gambia. For additional training, Georgina Wood became an advocate of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and received training in the US as well as a learning program in the World Bank. Additionally, she assisted in the design of a court-connected Ghanaian ADR program and served as the Chairperson for the committee to draft manuals for the trials of ADR in the Commercial Court of Ghana. In 2007, Lady Justice Wood received the Order of the Star of Ghana, Ghana’s highest National Award, for her public service in addition to receiving an honorary degree (LLD) from the University of Ghana in 2008. She left the Supreme Court of The Gambia in 2007 once she was appointed Chief Justice Wood of the Supreme Court of Ghana until her retirement in 2017.

Mireille Ndiaye was the first woman to reach the Presidency position on the Constitutional Council in Senegal. She was born in 1939 in French Togoland. Following her birth and primary schooling, she attained her law degree from the University of Paris and upon graduation worked in several different roles within the French judiciary. She became the Deputy Judge at the Dakar Court of First Instance, Advocate General at the Dakar Court of Appeals, Advocate General for the Supreme Court, and finally, simultaneously, the President of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation and Inspector General of Courts, both of which she held until 2001. She then became Attorney General at the Court of Cassation in 2001 and served for a year before reaching the Supreme Court of Cassation. Following that role, she became a justice on the Constitutional Council in Senegal in 2002. Eventually, she would become the first woman President of the Constitutional Council in 2004 and serve until 2010. Following her retirement from the Constitutional Council, she passed away on March 22, 2015.

Dr. Conceptia Denis Ouinsou was born in Grande Saline, Haiti in 1942. For her primary schooling, she attended the Soeurs de la Ste Trinite and College St. Pierre in the capital of Haiti. Following this preliminary education, Dr. Ouinsou received her baccalaureate degree and subsequently went to the Universite d’Etat d’Haiti to receive a license of Social Studies and Administration. She eventually attended and graduated with a degree in Legal Studies in law school in Haiti merely three years later.
As the valedictorian of her law school class, Dr. Ouinsou was enabled to earn a scholarship to seek a diploma in criminal sciences at the University of Paris II. Following this degree, Dr. Ouinsou acquired a doctorate in private law in also at the University of Paris II. She then immigrated to Benin in 1977, following her marriage with a Beninese man.

Upon arrival, she taught at the assistant professor level at the National University of Benin. In order to become a professor, she sought her aggregation in private law, a competitive examination for civil service required for a candidate to become an agrégé able to teach at a professor level. In 1985, with this certification in hand, she rose through the ranks of the University of Abomey-Calavi, becoming the Chair of the School of Law, Director of Academic Affairs, and finally Minister of Higher Education and Social Research. It was from this position that she was nominated to be the Counsel of Constitutional Court before becoming the President of the Court in 1998. Her fellow court members elected her to the President position.

She served in this role until 2008 upon which she had accumulated several honors from the governments of Germany, Haiti, and Benin. She continued to teach at University of Abomey-Calavi until her death in 2011.