Tahani Al-Gabali, the former vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court, died on Sunday at the age of 71 after contracting the coronavirus.
Al-Gabali was the first woman to hold a judicial position in Egypt when she was appointed in 2003. She became the vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court in 2007, during the most sensitive eras of its history.
Al-Gabali graduated from Cairo University’s Faculty of Law in 1973. She also acquired a diploma in Islamic Sharia later on.
She was the first woman to be elected as board member of the Egyptian Lawyers Syndicate in 1989 and was re-elected in the following round.
She was also the first woman to be elected to the Permanent Bureau of the Union of Arab Lawyers in 1992. Moreover, she served as a legal expert at the UN, an international commercial arbitrator, and a lecturer at the Arab Institute for Human Rights in Tunisia.
She received more than 30 medals and honorary shields throughout her life; most notably: the United Nations’ Shield for Social Work, the Shield of the Diplomatic Institute at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2003, the Shield of the 50th Anniversary of the Arab Lawyers’ Union in 1999, the Shield of the Progressive Women’s Union in 2000, and the shield of the Arab Women’s Organization in 2004.
