Kenneth Keith

Sir Kenneth James Keith, who lived from November 19, 1937, to May 13, 2026, was a New Zealand jurist and legal scholar born in Auckland who became the first New Zealander elected to the International Court of Justice. He taught law at Victoria University of Wellington from 1962 to 1991, becoming a full professor in 1974 and serving as dean of the law faculty from 1977 to 1981. He sat as a judge of the High Court and Court of Appeal of New Zealand from 1996, served on the Supreme Court of New Zealand from 2004 to 2005, and also sat as a judge of the Supreme Court of Fiji and of appeal courts in Samoa, the Cook Islands and Niue. He was elected to the International Court of Justice in November 2005 and served a nine-year term from 2006 to 2015. He was appointed a member of the Privy Council in 1998, made a Queen's Counsel in 1994, and was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1988.