Kenneth Keith

Kenneth Keith, 2011

Sir Kenneth Keith KBE , QC , ONZ (born November 19, 1937 in Auckland ) is a New Zealand lawyer . From 2006 to 2015 he was a judge at the International Court of Justice .

Life

Keith studied 1956-1965 jurisprudence at the University of Auckland , the Victoria University of Wellington and Harvard Law School . From 1961 he worked as a barrister and solicitor at the High Court of New Zealand.

Keith was a faculty member at Victoria University of Wellington from 1962 to 1964 and 1966 to 1991 and served as Dean from 1977 to 1981 . He was also visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto in the 1981/82 academic year .

From 1960 to 1962 Keith worked in the legal department of the New Zealand State Department and was a member of the Office of Legal Affairs at the United Nations from 1968 to 1970 .

Keith was appointed a judge at the New Zealand Court of Appeals in 1996 and moved to the newly established New Zealand Supreme Court in 2004 , where he served until 2005. In addition, he has been judge of appeal in Samoa and the Cook Islands since 1982 and on Niue since 1995 . In 2003 he was appointed judge of the Fiji Supreme Court .

After Keith had already been a member of the team that represented New Zealand in the Nuclear Tests cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in 1973, 1974 and 1995 , he served as a judge at the ICJ for a nine-year term from February 2006 to February 2015 . This made him the first New Zealand judge in the history of the court.

Keith is Associate Editor of the Public Law Review , the New Zealand Law Review , the Journal of Maritime Law Association of Australia and New Zealand, and the New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law .

From 2000 to 2007 he was President of the New Zealand Institute for International Relations.

Awards

Keith was awarded the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1988 for his services to legal reform and legal education . He was appointed Crown Attorney in 1994 and a member of the Order of New Zealand in 2007. The University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington also awarded him honorary doctorates (2001 and 2004, respectively). He has also been a member of the Institut de Droit international since 2003 . The American Society for International Law made him an honorary member in 2015.

Publications (selection)

• New Zealand Treaty Practice: The Executive and the Legislature . In: New Zealand Universities Law Review . Vol. 1, 1964, ISSN  0549-0618 , p. 272.
• Application of International Human Rights Law in New Zealand . In: Texas International Law Journal . Vol. 32, 1997, ISSN  0163-7479 , p. 401.
• The Nuclear Tests cases after ten years . In: Victoria University of Wellington Law Review . Vol. 14, 1983, ISSN  1171-042X , p. 345.
• The Role of Law in the United Nations . In: Victoria University of Wellington Law Review . Vol. 4, 1967, ISSN  1171-042X , p. 116.
• Sovereignty at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Fundamental or Outmoded? . In: Cambridge Law Journal . Vol. 63, 2004, ISSN  0008-1973 , p. 581.
• Succession to bilateral treaties by seceding States . In: American Journal of International Law . Vol. 61, 1967, ISSN  0002-9300 , p. 521.
• International Implications of Race Relations in New Zealand , Wellington 1972.

Web links

• Biography with picture on the ICJ website (English, French)