Suzanne Bastid was the first woman as a professor of international law in France, an international judge and later president of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal, the first woman to plead as a legal counsel at the International Court of Justice, and later the first ad hoc judge in the same court. She was the first to become a member and later preside Institut de droit international and to be elected as a member and later to preside Académie des sciences morales et politiques. She was also the founder and editor-in-chief of L’Annuaire français de droit international, a leader of diverse academic and professional associations, such as Société française pour le droit international, and the author of not a small number of academic publications. The portrait traces Suzanne Bastid’s ascension into a prominent and respected figure in international law in France and internationally in an analysis that focusing on the representations (visual and textual) and discourses of her exceptionality. How did Suzanne Bastid, a daughter, wife, mother of three, and grand-mother, manage to overcome all the gendered legal, social, cultural, and political obstacles? In the representations of Bastid today, the sex and gender marking on her career figures as a site of struggle for representation. She has become an emblem of progress for women in the legal professions, but was she a ‘feminist’, and in the eyes of whom? What difference does it make?
Immi Tallgren is a Research Fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, London School of Economics.
Antoine Buchet is a former member of the French judiciary, Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Commission who currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Appeal of the European Chemicals Agency.