Gabrielle Kirk McDonald

 Gabrielle Kirk McDonald is a Chief Judge at the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Judge McDonald decides if people committed war crimes and acts of genocide or assive killing of people.

Judge McDonald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She grew up in and around New York City and studied at Boston University and Manhattan's Hunter College.  Gabrielle went to Howard University Law School, in Washington D.C. where she graduated first in her class in 1966. Before she became a judge on the International War Crimes Tribunal, Judge McDonald was a federal judge in Texas. In 1979 she becme the first African American appointed to a federal court in Texas. She also worked for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and taught at the law schools of St. Mary’s University, the University of Texas and Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

Judge Mcdonald is different from other judges because she is sitting on the only war crimes court in the world that says whether a person is guilty of crimes against humanity. I like Judge McDonald because she is very good at what she does and is a nice person.

1999, by Gabe, third grade

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