Judge Anita Ušacka

Biography

Judge as of 11 March 2003, for a term of three years and re-elected in 2006 for a further term of nine years. Assigned to the Appeals Division. Elected from the Eastern European Group of States, list B.

Judge Ušacka (1952) is a Judge of the Appeals Division of the International Criminal Court. From her election to the ICC in 2003 until 2009, she was a Judge of the Trial Division. During that time, she was also temporarily attached to Pre-Trial Chamber I between 2007 and 2009. Prior to her election to the International Criminal Court, she was elected judge of the Latvian Constitutional Court upon its creation in 1996, where she served until 2003, when she joined the ICC. She has been a member of the International Association of Women Judges since 1997. From 1994 to 1996, she was the Executive Director of the Latvian branch of UNICEF. In 2002, Judge Ušacka was appointed full professor at the Department of Constitutional Law of Latvia University, where she has been academically affiliated since 1975. She has directed and contributed to a number of crucial projects integral to the transition to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. She has written reports and papers promoting the establishment in Latvia of the rule of law, protection of human rights, administrative law reform, constitutional law reform, fair trial guarantees, and judicial training and reform, among others. As a judge and professor she has acquired expertise in international humanitarian and public law, with a particular focus on the rights of women and children. Judge Ušacka obtained her law degree from the Latvia University and completed her PhD at the Faculty of Law, Moscow State University. Since 1990, her foreign training and research experience has included a year at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, studying in Germany on a Max Planck fellowship, and at the Human Rights Institute in Strasbourg.