Descriptive representation of women in international courts

Abstract

Should those who represent and govern us be similar to us?Several legal scholars have recently argued that the composition of international courts needs to better reflect the different experiences and social cleavages in society at large and called for measures to ensure increased descriptive representation.The idea is that when the composition of office holders in a governing institution does not "mirror" the distribution of certain descriptive features in the population at large, connected for example to gender, race or ethnicity, it may be justified to introduce policies to increase the presence of these features, such as fixed quotas, or requirements of having at least one person with the feature in question on a ballot or recruitment list.Normative political theorists were for long less enthusiastic about descriptive representation, and emphasized rather the shortcomings of quota thinking and policies (see for example Pennock, 1979, but also Kymlicka, 1995;Young, 1997).However, Jane Mansbridge (1999) turned the table with her seminal article "Should Blacks represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?A Contingent 'Yes'".While recognizing many of the potential "costs" of descriptive representation, Mansbridge argued that descriptive representation measures may have "benefits" as well, for example in contexts where there is mistrust between groups, or disbelief in some groups' "ability to rule".This article re-visits Mansbridge's approach in light of recent discussions of women's representation in international courts.Mansbridge develops her arguments with parliaments in mind-do her arguments hold for international courts?Are the costs she lists equally costly, This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri butio n-NonCo mmerc ial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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