Dean of the faculty, Professor Geoff McLay, says, “Sir Ken’s commitment to teaching, scholarship, and public service was unwavering. His influence on the Faculty of Law, and on the development of legal thought in Aotearoa and internationally, has been profound and enduring.
“He taught generations of New Zealanders about international law and he was proud of New Zealand’s contributions. He believed in the power of public education to change lives as it once changed his.”
Sir Ken was born in Auckland in November 1937. He received his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Auckland in 1960 and joined the bar the following year. He joined the Faculty of Law at Victoria University of Wellington in 1962. After completing a Master of Laws at Victoria, then going to Harvard to complete a Master of Law, he returned as a lecturer in 1966. He served as Dean from 1977 to 1981, and continued teaching until 1991, at which point he became Emeritus Professor. He was awarded Doctor of Laws degrees first from the University of Auckland in 2001, then from Victoria University in 2004.
As a member of various law and constitutional reform bodies, Sir Ken helped shape many statutes that are now fundamental to New Zealand’s constitution including the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System, whose report Towards a better democracy recommended the adoption of mixed-member proportional representation (MMP).
Sir Ken was a founding member of the Law Commission from 1986 to 1991 and President from 1991 to 1996.
Of his judicial career, the Chief Justice, the Rt Hon Dame Helen Winkelmann, acknowledges his exceptional contribution to New Zealand and to the international legal order as a legal academic, law reformer, and judge.
“Sir Ken’s contributions as a sitting judge were immense and far-reaching. In his judging, he worked tirelessly in the service of justice. He sat on appellate courts in New Zealand and across the Pacific. Having served as a judge of the Court of Appeal in New Zealand and on panels of the Privy Council in London, he was one of the five judges to make up the inaugural Supreme Court bench when it was established in 2004 as New Zealand’s final court of appeal,” says Dame Helen in a media release from the Chief Justice of New Zealand.
“Sir Ken is the only New Zealand judge to have been elected to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.”
Sir Ken had previously appeared at the International Court of Justice as part of New Zealand’s legal team challenging the legality of French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1973 and 1974, and again in 1995. He also led the New Zealand delegation to the Diplomatic Conference with prepared the additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention in 1977. He held his role as a judge of the ICJ from 2006 to 2015.
Despite his other roles, Sir Ken never lost his connections to the faculty he was a member of for over 60 years. As Professor McLay says, “in partnership with Jocelyn he poured his heart and soul into the faculty”.
His memoir, Without Fear or Favour: A Life in Law, was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in 2025.
Sir Ken was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1988 for services to law reform and legal education. In the 2007 Queen’s Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Member of The Order of New Zealand, New Zealand’s highest honour.
He and Lady Jocelyn were generous philanthropists, in particular for the New Zealand Red Cross, of which he was a Counsellor of Honour. They have supported the Victoria University of Wellington Foundation for over thirty years, including funding the Sir Ken Keith ANZSIL Lecture, which is held in his honour every three years. He was also a generous supporter of the National Music Centre.
Sir Ken is survived by his wife, Lady Jocelyn Keith, their children Judi, John, Susan and Ben, and their nine grandchildren.