Kenneth Keith

Sir Kenneth James Keith ONZ KBE QC (born 19 November 1937)[1] is a New Zealand judge. He was elected to the International Court of Justice in November 2005, serving a nine-year term during the years 2006 through 2015.[2]

The Right Honourable Sir Kenneth Keith ONZ KBE QC
Keith in 2007
Personal details
Born	(1937-11-19) 19 November 1937 Auckland, New Zealand
Alma mater	Victoria University College Harvard University
Profession	Lawyer, judge

Keith was educated at the Auckland Grammar School and studied law at the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, and Harvard Law School. He was a faculty member of Victoria University from 1962 to 1964 and from 1966 to 1991. He served in the New Zealand Department of External Affairs during the early 1960s, and as a member of the United Nations Secretariat from 1968 to 1970. After this, he was Director of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs[3][4] and later became President of the New Zealand Law Commission. He was also a member of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System which was key in changing New Zealand's electoral system. In 1993 he was a member of the Working Party on the Reorganisation of the Income Tax Act 1976 which was instrumental in launching a fundamental reform the way New Zealand tax legislation was written.

From 1996 to 2003, Keith was a Judge of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand and was a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. He was subsequently one of the inaugural appointments to the new Supreme Court of New Zealand which replaced the Privy Council. Prior to his appointment to the International Court of Justice, he sat (as required) as a Judge of Appeal in Samoa (since 1982), the Cook Islands (since 1982) and Niue (since 1995), and Judge of the Supreme Court of Fiji. He has also sat as the Chair of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Tribunal (UPS v Canada).