Joan Donoghue

Joan E. Donoghue (born December 12, 1956) is an American lawyer, international legal scholar, former U.S. State Department official, and former president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). She was first elected to the court in 2010, re-elected in 2014, and elected by the ICJ judges to be president of the ICJ in 2021. She was the third woman to be elected to the ICJ and the first American woman elected as president of the court.

Education and career Donoghue graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with honors degrees in Russian studies and biology in 1978. She subsequently received her Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1981. She previously served as the Office of the Legal Adviser's Deputy Legal Adviser (2000–2001) Assistant Legal Adviser for Economic and Business Affairs (1994–1999); African Affairs (1993–1994); and Oceans, Environment, and Science (1989–1991). She also served as deputy general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department, overseeing all aspects of the department's work, including international financial institutions. In the General Assembly, Donoghue received 159 votes out of 167 valid ballots with 8 abstentions. In the Security Council, she received all 15 votes.

Donoghue was only the fourth woman elected to be a member of the court since 1945. Of the court's 15 members, four are now female (the others are Xue Hanqin, Julia Sebutinde, and Hilary Charlesworth ).

In 2014, Donoghue was nominated for a second term on the ICJ by the U.S. National Group of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (The Hague), and was re-elected with 156 votes in the first round of voting at the International Court of Justice judges election, 2014.

As an ICJ judge, she issued a dissenting opinion in the case Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, in which the ICJ issued an advisory opinion in 2017 on the Chagos Archipelago sovereignty dispute between the United Kingdom and Mauritius in response to a request from the United Nations General Assembly. The court deemed the United Kingdom's separation of the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius in 1965, leading to the expulsion of the Chagossians when both were colonial territories, to be unlawful. Judge Donoghue dissented from the majority opinion, reasoning that:I consider that the Advisory Opinion has the effect of circumventing the absence of United Kingdom consent to judicial settlement of the bilateral dispute between the United Kingdom and Mauritius regarding sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago and thus undermines the integrity of the Court’s judicial function. For this reason, I believe that the Court should have exercised its discretion to decline to give the Advisory Opinion. Donoghue was elected 26th president of the court on February 8, 2021, succeeding Abdulqawi Yusuf, for a term of three years. She is the second woman to hold the post (alongside Rosalyn Higgins) and third American (alongside Stephen Schwebel and Green Hackworth).

On January 26, 2024, Donoghue delivered an interim ruling on South Africa v. Israel on behalf of the ICJ. On February 4, Nawaf Salam was elected as her successor for President of the ICJ.