Mary McGowan Davis

Judge Davis, who served as an Acting Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York from 1986-1998, has been involved in a variety of matters relating to transitional justice and human rights law since her retirement from the bench. In 2004, and again in 2005, she worked in Afghanistan’s first full-service public defender office, where she mentored Afghan lawyers representing detainees in the local prisons and worked to hone their analytical and trial advocacy skills. Additionally she has traveled to Sierra Leone and Cambodia in connection with projects related to the establishment of special courts to try war criminals in those countries, and she has been a frequent visitor to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as a consultant and as a participant in trial advocacy training programs for prosecutors at the Tribunal. She will return to Cairo in June 2006 to teach International Criminal Law at Seton Hall University Law School’s summer program at the American University in Cairo, and continues her association with Legal Momentum – Advancing Women’s Rights (formerly the NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund) in New York City. In addition to being a member of the International Association of Women Judges’ Board of Managerial Trustees, she is on the boards of the International Judicial Academy and the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists.