The Supreme Court of India is the supreme judicial authority and the highest court of the Republic of India. It is the final court of appeal for all civil and criminal cases in India. It also has the power of judicial review. The Supreme Court, which consists of the Chief Justice of India and a maximum of fellow 33 judges, has extensive powers in the form of original, appellate and advisory jurisdictions.
The Chief Justice of India (CJI) (ISO: Bhārat kē Mukhya Nyāyādhīśa) is the highest-ranking officer of the Indian judiciary and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of India. The Constitution of India grants power to the President of India to appoint, as recommended by the outgoing chief justice in consultation with other judges as envisaged in Article 124 (2) of the Constitution, the next chief justice, who will serve until they reach the age of 65 or are removed by the constitutional process of impeachment.
M. Fathima Beevi was an Indian judge who was a justice of the Supreme Court of India. Appointed to the apex Court in 1989, she became the first female judge to be a part of the Supreme Court of India, and the first Muslim woman to be appointed to any of the higher judiciaries in the country. On her retirement from the court, she served as a member of the National Human Rights Commission and later as the Governor of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu from 1997 to 2001. In 2023, she was honoured with Kerala Prabha Award, the second-highest honour given by the Government of Kerala. In the 2024 honours list, she was posthumously awarded the Padma Bhushan.
Dana Anderson Fabe is an American lawyer, retired judge, and mediator. She served as a justice of the Alaska Supreme Court from 1996 to 2016, including three terms as the court's chief justice. She previously served as an Alaska trial court judge for nearly eight years, from 1988 to 1996. Fabe was the first woman appointed to the Alaska Supreme Court, as well as its first female chief justice.
Susie Marshall Sharp was an American jurist who served as the first female chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was not the first woman to head the highest court in a U.S. state, but is believed to be the first woman elected to such a post in a state, like North Carolina, in which the position is elected by the people separately from that of Associate Justice. In 1965, Lorna E. Lockwood became the first female chief justice of a state supreme court, but in Arizona, the Supreme Court justices elect their chief justice.
The number of women in the United States judiciary has increased as more women have entered law school, but women still face significant barriers in pursuing legal careers.
The Federal Shariat Court (FSC) is a constitutional islamic religious court of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which has the power to examine and determine whether the laws of the country comply with Sharia law. The court was established in 1980 during the government of the President General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. It is located in the federal capital, Islamabad. It hears appeals under the Hudood Ordinances, a religious legislation in the country introduced in 1979.
Ellen Ash Peters was an American lawyer and judge. She was appointed to the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1978. She was the first woman appointed to that court.
Sara Rosalie Wahl was an American feminist, lawyer, public defender, clinical law professor, and judge. She was the first woman to serve on the Minnesota Supreme Court where she served for seventeen years. Governor Rudy Perpich nominated Wahl to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1977 and Wahl won the election to the seat in a non-partisan election in 1978, defeating three male candidates. She chaired the state's Gender Bias Taskforce and Racial Bias Taskforce and led the American Bar Association's efforts to establish clinical legal education. She was a champion for the mentally ill and for displaced homemakers. She wrote 549 opinions including for the majority in holding that different penalties for crack and powder cocaine were unconstitutional in State v. Russell .
Women in law describes the role played by women in the legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers, paralegals, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans.
Women work in the legal profession and related occupations throughout Canada, as lawyers, prosecutors, judges, legal scholars, law professors and law school deans. In Canada, while 37.1% of lawyers are women, "50% ...said they felt their [law] firms were doing "poorly" or "very poorly" in their provision of flexible work arrangements". It was also reported that, in 2006 in Ontario, "racialized women accounted for 16% of all lawyers under 30" and that only 1% of lawyers were Aboriginal.
Justice Gita Mittal is a retired Indian judge. She is the former Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court and the first woman judge to serve in that capacity. She has also served as the Acting Chief Justice of Delhi High Court while she was serving as a Judge of the Delhi High Court.
Betty Clark Dickey is the first woman to serve as the chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Lenore Loving Prather was the Supreme Court of Mississippi’s first female justice and chief justice. Prather began her law career as an attorney and city court judge throughout the 1960s. After working as a Chancery judge in the 1970s, she became a Supreme Court judge for Mississippi in 1982. Prather was later promoted to Chief Justice in 1998 and held this position until 2001.
