Cecilia Muñoz-Palma-First Female Supreme Court Associate Justice

Cecilia Muñoz-Palma (November 22, 1913 — January 2, 2006) was the first woman appointed to sit on the Supreme Court of the Philippines. She was appointed by President Ferdinand Marcos on October 29, 1973, and served in the Court until she reached the then-mandatory retirement age of 65. She later served as the president of the 1986 Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution.

The daughter of a congressman from Batangas, Muñoz-Palma earned her law degree from the University of the Philippines, and a Master of Laws degree from Yale University. She became the first woman prosecutor of Quezon City in 1947. Seven years later, she became the first female district judge when she was named a trial court judge for Negros Oriental.[1] In the next few years, she was assigned as a judge to Laguna and Rizal until her appointment to the Court of Appeals in 1968, the second woman ever to be appointed to the appellate court. In 1973, she again made history, this time as the first female Supreme Court Associate Justice, preceding by eight years Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

source: wikipedia


Filipina,Cecilia Munoz-Palma,First Female Supreme CourtAssociate Justice