Outstanding Women of International, European and Constitutional Law

DEBATE

The project “Outstanding Women of International, European and Constitutional Law“ is an initiative of students and young scholars of the Faculty of Law at the University of Hamburg, inspired by an eponymous seminar held by Verena Kahl (Ass. iur., M.A.) and Prof. Dr. Markus Kotzur, LL.M. (Duke Univ.) in 2021. The aim of the project is to make distinguished women and their important contributions to the development of the national and international legal order visible and better known.

Since 2022, a pocket calendar consisting of twelve short portraits of outstanding women in the fields of International, European and Constitutional Law has been published annually to showcase women and their achievements as well as challenges they encountered throughout the course of their careers. Each calendar aims to feature women of different times and various backgrounds, following an intersectional approach.

In 2024, the project started a collaboration with the Verfassungsblog to publish detailed monthly portraits of the women presented in the calendar. For more information, please visit the project’s UHH website or follow us on social media (@outstanding_women_jura_uhh on Instagram and @OW_Jura_UHH on X).

12 May 2024

Lauritz Wilde

Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz

Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz was an acknowledged scientist, a women’s rights activist, a politician, and a diplomat. Mostly known for being one of four women to sign the United Nations Charter in 1945 and assuring the inclusion of the rights of women in its preamble, she also played a vital role in attaining women’s suffrage in Brazil.

07 April 2024

Julia Clara Lips

Anna Julia Cooper

Dr. Anna Julia Cooper was born into slavery at a time, when the 1831 Act prohibited the teaching of literacy to enslaved people in North Carolina in order to prevent rebellion and emancipation. Despite this, she was the fourth (known) Black female Ph.D. and the first African American woman to receive a doctorade from the Sorbonne University. She is still considered a mother of Black feminism and a formidable writer, activist, and educator.

08 March 2024

Franziska Bachmann

Hélène Cazes Benatar

Based in Casablanca, Hélène Cazes Benatar not only assisted a great number of refugees fleeing from Europe to North Africa, but also helped with the liberation of internees in Saharan forced labor and internment camps run by the Vichy regime. Her social, political and even clandestine activities were significant and extend far beyond the Jewish community until well after the Second World War.

14 February 2024

Verena Kahl

Christine de Pizan

In conversations on missing female voices in the traditional development of international law a repetitive argument given as an explanation for the absence of women as active designers and contributors to international law is that it was simply unusual to find women in certain professions at that time due to the assignment of gender roles and corresponding conduct and activities considered as adequate. There is certainly a great deal of truth in this explanation. Nevertheless, the argument that the absence of women was a normal side effect of the traditional social circumstances at that time could also serve as an excuse to overlook, ignore and make women invisible, who have actually played a crucial role as active designers of the international legal order. One of them is Christine de Pizan.

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Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz

Anna Julia Cooper

Hélène Cazes Benatar

Christine de Pizan

Book Versions

Book Versions of Project