Diplomacy & Public Service
Landmark
Georgina Theodora Wood
born 1947
Ghana's first female Chief Justice
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Why they are here
Appointed Chief Justice in June 2007, the first woman to hold the office, after a career in the judiciary spanning five decades.
Georgina Theodora Wood began as a police prosecutor in 1971 and moved to the bench, working up through the district and circuit courts, the High Court and the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court of Ghana in 2002.
In June 2007 she was sworn in as Chief Justice — the first woman to head the Ghanaian judiciary in its history, and one of the first in West Africa. She held the office for close to a decade.
The defining moment came in 2012, when the presidential election result was challenged in the Supreme Court. Wood presided over a panel of nine justices hearing the petition, and took the unusual decision to allow the proceedings to be televised live and in full. Ghanaians watched their own supreme court argue the case for months. The court upheld the result, the losing side accepted it publicly, and the episode is widely credited with settling a dispute that in several neighbouring countries had produced violence. It is the single clearest demonstration of judicial authority in Ghana's Fourth Republic.
She also chaired the committee that investigated the killings of women in Accra in the late 1990s, and pressed throughout her tenure on court delays and on the appointment of women to the bench. She retired in 2017.
In June 2007 she was sworn in as Chief Justice — the first woman to head the Ghanaian judiciary in its history, and one of the first in West Africa. She held the office for close to a decade.
The defining moment came in 2012, when the presidential election result was challenged in the Supreme Court. Wood presided over a panel of nine justices hearing the petition, and took the unusual decision to allow the proceedings to be televised live and in full. Ghanaians watched their own supreme court argue the case for months. The court upheld the result, the losing side accepted it publicly, and the episode is widely credited with settling a dispute that in several neighbouring countries had produced violence. It is the single clearest demonstration of judicial authority in Ghana's Fourth Republic.
She also chaired the committee that investigated the killings of women in Accra in the late 1990s, and pressed throughout her tenure on court delays and on the appointment of women to the bench. She retired in 2017.
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