Guest Speaker:
Sir Kenneth Keith ONZ KBE QC
Event Date: Tuesday 27th April 2021
Event Time: 5:30 pm-7:00 pm
Event Location:
Bell Gully
Level 21, Wellington ANZ Centre, 171 Featherston Street, Wellington, 6011.
(Please note no building access after 6pm)
EVENT REGISTRATION IS ESSENTIAL AND BY INVITATION ONLY
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What role does international law play in Asia? Or does realpolitik prevail? How are international issues and disputes arising within the region handled?
Within that impossibly large context Sir Ken will consider matters selected from the following- a dispute between Cambodia and Thailand about sovereignty over a Temple on their border, another between Malaysia and Singapore over an island at the end of the Singapore strait, the disputes between Australia, New Zealand and Japan over marine resources, the South China case between the Philippines and China, several disputes between India and Pakistan and the dispute between Timor Leste and Australia over the Timor Sea resources.
How are matters of that kind best handled? What is the role of negotiation, good offices, mediation, arbitration or adjudication? How are the issues to be framed? When may it be better to put the controversy to one side?
Sir Kenneth Keith ONZ KBE QC
Sir Kenneth Keith studied law at the University of Auckland, the Victoria University of Wellington and Harvard Law School. He has worked as a clerk in the Magistrates’ Court in Auckland, a lawyer in the Department of External Affairs, and a lawyer in the United Nations Secretariat in New York. For much of his working life he was a member of the law faculty of VUW to which he has now returned as a professor emeritus. He has been a member of law and constitutional reform bodies, including the Law Commission and the Royal Commission on the Electoral System. He was a member of the New Zealand team in the Nuclear Tests cases against France. From 1996 to 2006 he was a member of the New Zealand Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. He was elected to be one of the 15 judges of the International Court of Justice and served on it from 2006 to 2015. He has also been a judge of appeal in Samoa, Fiji, the Cook Islands and Niue and a member of several international tribunals.
