Liberia: Cllr. Charlyne Brumskine Appointed ECOWAS Court Judge

When Counsellor Charlyne M. Brumskine took the oath of office on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, as a judge of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, the moment represented more than another senior appointment for a Liberian lawyer. It marked the movement of a family legal legacy from Liberian courtrooms and political arena onto one of West Africa's most important regional judicial institutions. Charlyne, the daughter of the late Counsellor Charles Walker Brumskine, one of the country's most prominent lawyers, former Senate President Pro Tempore, founder of the Liberty Party and three-time presidential candidate, is now carrying the Brumskine name into a court whose decisions can affect governments, institutions and citizens across the Economic Community of West African States. Her induction also carries a historic distinction of its own--she is the first Liberian woman to serve as a judge of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. Her four-year, non-renewable term runs from 2026 to 2030. She joins four other newly appointed judges from Benin, The Gambia, Nigeria and Togo. Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines Her father spent much of his professional life arguing that the country's future could be transformed through law. His daughter is now taking that philosophy beyond the Liberian borders, into a regional judicial system dealing with human rights, regional integration, state obligations and the rule of law. For Charlyne Brumskine, the appointment is deeply personal. When she learned that Liberia had selected her for the ECOWAS Court, she said her thoughts immediately turned to her father, who died in November 2019. Charles Walker Brumskine had himself aspired to regional service and, according to his daughter, had hoped to become Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission. "My father did not get it. You can imagine how proud I feel to have been able to achieve that," she said of her appointment. That statement captures the unusual character of her elevation. It is simultaneously a personal achievement, a professional progression and, in her eyes, a continuation of something her father never had the opportunity to accomplish. Yet describing the appointment merely as the continuation of her father's legacy would understate the career she has built independently. Charles Walker Brumskine's public identity was eventually dominated by politics, but his daughter has consistently emphasized that law came first. Born in Grand Bassa County in 1951, Brumskine studied economics at the University of Liberia before earning his LL.B. from the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law in 1981 and an LL.M. from Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law in Texas the following year. He subsequently became one of the country's prominent attorneys and later entered national politics. He became President Pro Tempore of the Liberian Senate in the late 1990s and later founded the Liberty Party. He ran for the Liberian presidency in 2005, 2011 and 2017, establishing himself as one of the country's most recognizable opposition political figures. But Charlyne's own recollection of her father places his legal career at the center of his identity. In a speech after topping the 2022 Liberian Supreme Court Bar Examination, she recalled that her father had also "duxed" the Supreme Court Bar Examination in 1985. "My father was a man of excellence. My father was a man who troubled the waters. My father was a Liberian Jurist!" she declared. She recalled his belief that lawyers could become agents of national transformation and said he had begun seriously training her before his death. That history gives Tuesday's induction a particularly striking dimension--father and daughter both reached the top of their respective Supreme Court Bar classes, decades apart, before Charlyne moved on to the regional judicial stage. Charlyne Brumskine's professional record is not confined to her family name. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science fr