Grant Hammond

Sir Robert Grant Hammond, KNZM, is a prominent New Zealand jurist and law professor. He is a former judge of the New Zealand Court of Appeal during which time he was also President of the New Zealand Law Commission and chair of the Legislation Advisory Committee to Parliament.^[2] He has published a wide range of books and legal texts and is one of the top law reform experts in the Commonwealth.

Before his appointment to the judiciary, Sir Grant was made a partner in New Zealand law firm Tompkins Wake & Co in his early twenties. He was also a Professor of Law at a number of American, Canadian and New Zealand universities, as well as serving as the chairman of a Canadian law reform agency and as director of The Institute of Law Research and Reform at University of Alberta.

He was appointed to the bench of the High Court of New Zealand in 1992 and as a judge of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand in January 2004. Sir Grant then spent a nearly a decade as a judge of the Court of Appeal where he presided over a number of important civil and criminal appeals. In 2010 he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Samoa. In the same year he took up the presidency of the New Zealand Law Commission and chair of the Legislation Advisory Committee to Parliament.

In the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Justice Hammond was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the law. He was the recipient of the prestigious Robert S Campbell Fellow at Magdalen College of Oxford University in 2008 and in 2014 was made one of only two Distinguished Fellows of Victoria University of Wellington along with Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer.^[3] He continues to teach law in New Zealand.

Education and Teaching

Sir Grant graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Philosophy in History from the University of Auckland. Later he obtained a Master of Laws from the University of Illinois and a Doctorate of Laws from the University of Waikato.^[4]

Sir Grant spent much of his early teaching career as a law professor throughout North America. In 1989 he returned to Auckland and was appointed a Professor of Law at the University of Auckland where he subsequently became Dean of Law.

He is currently a Professor of Judicial Studies at University of Waikato where he was previously Dean of Law.

The complete list of law schools where he has taught includes: ^[5][6]

• University of Illinois
• Dalhousie University in Canada
• New York ivy-league school Cornell University
• Victoria University of Wellington
• Waikato University
• University of Alberta
• University of Auckland
• Magdalen College of Oxford University

New Zealand Law Commission

During his time at the Law Commission Sir Grant oversaw the completion of a number of controversial reports on a range of issues. These included media reporting of suicide, victims of family violence who commit homicide, and the creation of a separate crime of non-fatal strangulation.^[7]

References

External links

• Courts of New Zealand, Nga Koti o Aotearoa