Feminist Judgments projects creatively and critically rewrite judgments from a feminist perspective and provide a model for more gender-sensitive judging. They reveal the need to incorporate women’s experience into decision-making and the formulation of legal rules, as well as to rethink more broadly what gender justice demands. However, they have so far been limited to Western legal systems and/or to those in the common law world.
A research project coordinated by Dr. Silvia Suteu (UCL Laws and EUI), exploring the question of what feminist judging might look like beyond these contexts. The focus is on Central and Eastern European countries and the specific challenges and opportunities for feminist judging in the region. Not only are these countries part of the civil law tradition, and thereby their courts less likely to issue the type of discursive judgments familiar to the common lawyer, but they also operate under different constraints, including a propensity for formalism inherited from the communist legal method. The role of the judge in the legal process is different, as are the traditions, legacies, and unspoken norms. Legal education and the overall legal culture in these countries will present obstacles and openings unlike those of their common law counterparts. Last but not least, there has been strong resistance to and backlash against gender equality in the region, as exemplified by judicial and legislative steps to ban so-called “gender ideology” and the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. The current climate therefore makes it that much more important to study, model, and push for feminist judging.
Result:
Chapter on Bulgaria, titled A Court and a Nation Lost in Translation: Feminist Rewriting of Judgment №13/2018 of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, in "Feminist judgments in Central and Eastern Europe as a response to gendered democratic backsliding", ed. by Silvia Suteu.
A research project coordinated by Dr. Silvia Suteu (UCL Laws and EUI), exploring the question of what feminist judging might look like beyond these contexts. The focus is on Central and Eastern European countries and the specific challenges and opportunities for feminist judging in the region. Not only are these countries part of the civil law tradition, and thereby their courts less likely to issue the type of discursive judgments familiar to the common lawyer, but they also operate under different constraints, including a propensity for formalism inherited from the communist legal method. The role of the judge in the legal process is different, as are the traditions, legacies, and unspoken norms. Legal education and the overall legal culture in these countries will present obstacles and openings unlike those of their common law counterparts. Last but not least, there has been strong resistance to and backlash against gender equality in the region, as exemplified by judicial and legislative steps to ban so-called “gender ideology” and the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. The current climate therefore makes it that much more important to study, model, and push for feminist judging.
Result:
Chapter on Bulgaria, titled A Court and a Nation Lost in Translation: Feminist Rewriting of Judgment №13/2018 of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, in "Feminist judgments in Central and Eastern Europe as a response to gendered democratic backsliding", ed. by Silvia Suteu.
Period: 2021 - 2026
Coordinator: Ruzha Smilova
Partners: University College London (Law) and European University Institute