Justice Dr Mathilda Twomey-Woods

Justice Dr Mathilda Twomey-Woods

Justice Dr Mathilda Twomey-Woods is a native of Seychelles and is fluent in English, French, and Creole.  She holds a BA in English and French Law from the University of Kent and a degree in French Law from the Université de Paris-Sud. Admitted to the Bar of England and Wales in 1987, she practiced as a barrister in Seychelles and is a bencher of the Middle Temple. She later earned an LLM in Public Law and a PhD in comparative law from the University of Galway, where she also taught tort law.  She was a member of the Seychelles Constitutional Commission in 1993, responsible for drafting the third constitution.  She was appointed to the Seychelles Court of Appeal in 2011 and as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Seychelles in 2015. She ended her tenure as Chief Justice in 2020 to pursue her academic interests but continues to serve in the Seychelles’ apex court as a sessional justice of appeal.  She chaired both the Civil Code Revision Commission and the Child Law Reform Committee in Seychelles, proposing a draft Civil Code passed by the National Assembly in 2020 and a Sexual Offences Bill presented to the President in June 2021.  Since 2017, she has been on the advisory board of the UNODC's Global Judicial Integrity Network. She also chaired and is a member of the Seychelles Legal Information Institute, which promotes free access to legal materials (see www.seylii.org).  She is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law at the University of Galway, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Seychelles and a member of its Council.  She is the Academic Director of the Judicial Institute for Africa and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Cape Town.   She has devised and taught courses for the continuous professional development of judicial officers, lawyers and prosecutors in Angola, Caiman Islands, E-Swatini, Indonesia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mozambique, Namibia, Philippines, Tanzania, South Africa, Seychelles, Thailand, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Vietnam.  She has published widely, including her monograph, “Legal Métissage in a Micro jurisdiction: the Mixing of Common Law and Civil Law in Seychelles.”