This memorandum discusses the strategies courts employ around the world to treat child victims and witnesses and their evidence when giving testimony. International and regional human rights standards have highlighted good practices in the treatment of vulnerable young child witnesses, centering on the foundational principle of the best interests of the child.
Although great strides have been made in breaking down the barriers that have previously kept women from being able to have the same rights and privileges to work in the legal profession that men enjoy, there is still progress to be made.
With the goal of boosting women's involvement in economic and professional activities, the "Rixain" Law of 24 December 2021 includes a number of measures aimed at achieving greater equality between women and men in French companies. This law introduces an obligation to ensure gender-balanced representation in management positions in large companies. Each year, companies with more than 1,000 employees must publish on their website any gaps that may exist in the representation of women and men among their senior executives and members of their management bodies.
Cole Ross was convicted of murder and arson. He appealed his conviction claiming, among other things, that the Commonwealth of Kentucky used its preemptory challenges to dismiss female jurors on the basis of gender. Seven out of the nine peremptory challenges used by the Commonwealth to remove prospective jurors were used to dismiss women. The trial court found that the Commonwealth’s justifications were gender neutral and non-pretextual.
The Supreme Court upheld lower court’s decision finding that the Seoul Young Men’s Christian Associations (“YMCA”), a private organization, violated the Constitution when it excluded female from general membership. The Supreme Court found sexual discrimination, which excludes women from general membership qualification, to be against “social order exceeding tolerable limits in light of our community’s sound common senses and legal sentiment.” Accordingly, the Supreme Court found YMCA to have violated the Constitution despite its private organization status.
The Victim, born a male, identified as a female while growing up and was diagnosed with gender identity disorder. At the age of twenty-four, the Victim underwent a sex-change operation and was diagnosed as a transsexual by a psychiatrist. The Victim had cohabited with a male for ten years and had lived as a female for the past thirty years after the operation. Under Korean law, the victim of the crime of rape must be female. Thus, the central issue of the case pertained to the appropriate standard in determining the legal gender of a rape victim.
Sandra Day O'Connor & Kim K. Azzarelli, Sustainable Development, Rule of Law, and the Impact of Women Judges, 44 CORNELL INT’L L.J. 1 (2011). Available at: https://initiatives.virtuefoundation.org/media/pdfs/Sustainable-Development-Impact-of-Women-Judges.pdf
