Female judicial leadership at the sub-national level

Gabrielle Appleby and Heather Roberts

Chapter 11 in Elgar Companion to Female Chief Justices in Comparative Perspective, 2026, pp 231-250 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In many federal systems, the trailblazing female judicial leaders have held office at the sub-national level. Taking Australia as an example, this chapter reflects on what the tenures of this first generation can tell us about female and feminist judicial leadership, including the extent to which female judicial leadership prompts a re-evaluation of judicial institutional values. We also examine how gendered forces can affect how a judicial leader promotes and defends, and should be assessed against, these values. Through two case studies, President Margaret McMurdo (Queensland, 1998–2017) and Chief Justice Marilyn Warren (Victoria, 2003–2017), we identify a number of themes. These include a shared experience of controversy at appointment around gender, none of which dampened their proactive promotion of diversity during their tenures. Both also promoted traditional judicial values, and particularly, independence, but with contemporary emphasis, while other judicial values, such as impartiality and transparency, were given a distinctly feminist reconceptualisation.

Keywords: Judicial federalism; Female judicial leadership; Feminist judicial values; Chief justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035308637
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035308644.00017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22158_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().