WOMEN CHIEF JUSTICES ACROSS AFRICA
Click below to read our background paper:
Her Ladyship Chief Justice: The Rise of Female Leadership in the Judiciary in Africa
Marie Madeleine Mborantsuo
Gabon
President, Constitutional Court, 1998-2001 and 2005-
Marie Madeleine Mborantsuo holds a doctorate in Law and currently serves as the President of the Constitutional Court in Gabon. She was educated for her primary schooling at the Catholic School St-Hilaire, and received her secondary schooling at College Notre- Dame de la Salette. She obtained her baccalaureate degree at the State High School of Franceville in 1975. Her academic degrees include a master’s degree in law from the National University of Gabon in 1979, and a Masters in Public Finance, Taxation, and Constitutional Law from the University of Paris II. Mborantsuo worked as an auditor for the Chamber of Accounts at the Supreme Court of Gabon. She was able to leverage this position to a long-term internship at the French Court of Auditors and the Institute of Public Administration in Paris, France. After gaining legal experience in France, Mborantsuo returned to Gabon to serve in the Chambre des Comptes and as an advisor to the Minister of Planning whilst also working as a Professor at Omar Bongo University.
In 1983, she was promoted to the position of President in the Audit Chamber of the Supreme Court. Then, in 1990, she assisted in writing Gabon’s new constitution to rethink the institutions of democratic law, as a multiparty system was reinstated politically. The new constitution established the Constitutional Court of which Mborantsuo was named one of the first members in March 1991 before becoming the first elected President by her peers in October of 1991. After another constitutional amendment, in 1998, Mborantsuo was appointed President of the Constitutional Court, the same position she had held previously, by the President of the Republic rather than elected amongst her peers on the Constitutional Court. Despite the elevation to President of the Constitutional Court, Mborantsuo continued to serve as a professor of law at University of Omar Bongo. To supplement her career in higher education, she acquired her Doctorate in Constitutional Law at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 2005. While she was writing her doctoral thesis, Mborantsuo stopped working on the Constitutional Court in 2001 until she was reappointed by the President of Gabon in 2005. She continues to simultaneously serve in the role of President of the Constitutional Court and work as a professor of law today.