| Sigríður Á. Andersen | |
| Office: | Minister of Justice |
| Primeminister: | Bjarni Benediktsson Katrín Jakobsdóttir |
| Successor: | Þórdís Gylfadóttir |
| Party: | Independence Party |
| Birth Date: | 21 November 1971 |
| Birth Place: | Reykjavík, Iceland |
| Spouse: | Glúmur Jón Björnsson |
| Alma Mater: | University of Iceland |
| Term Start: | 11 January 2017 |
| Term End: | 14 March 2019 |
Sigríður Ásthildur Andersen (born 21 November 1971) is an Icelandic politician and lawyer who served as the Minister of Justice of Iceland from 2017–2019.[1] [2] [3] She resigned as minister of justice after the European Court of Human Rights found her appointments of judges to the Icelandic court of appeals to be illegal.[4] [5]
She has been a member of the Icelandic parliament (Althing) for the Independence Party since 2015.[6] [7]
Sigríður graduated from Reykjavik Junior College in 1991, studied law at the University of Iceland, and became an attorney in 2001.[8] From 1999–2005 she worked as a lawyer at the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce, sat on the Council of District Courts from 2004–2009, and then worked at a private law firm from 2007–2015.
She was a deputy member of parliament for the Independence Party for a short while in 2008 and for a few months in 2012–2015. She then became an elected member of parliament in 2015.
Sigríður has been a controversial figure during her tenure as the minister of justice.[9] She played a pivotal role in the controversy surrounding the restored honour of a convicted child sex offender which led to the dissolution of the Cabinet of Iceland under prime minister Bjarni Benediktsson in 2017.[10] [11]
In 2017, she did not follow the recommendations of a special committee list of the most qualified judges for the newly formed Icelandic court of appeals and instead hand-picked 4 of them, including the wife of fellow Independence Party parliamentarian Brynjar Níelsson.[12] On 12 March 2019 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the appointments had been made illegally.[13] On 13 March 2019, in the aftermath of the ruling, Sigríður announced that she would resign as minister of justice.[4]