Sir John Stephen Kós (born 23 January 1959) is a New Zealand judge on the

Supreme Court of New Zealand The Supreme Court of New Zealand () is the highest court and the court of last resort of New Zealand. It formally came into being on 1 January 2004 and sat for the first time on 1 July 2004. It replaced the right of appeal to the Judicial Co ...

and the former President of the

Court of Appeal of New Zealand The Court of Appeal of New Zealand () is the principal intermediate appellate court of New Zealand. It is also the final appellate court for a number of matters. In practice, most appeals are resolved at this intermediate appellate level, rathe ...

Early life and career

The son of a Hungarian refugee, Kós was born in

Mosgiel Mosgiel () is an urban satellite of Dunedin in Otago, New Zealand, fifteen kilometres west of the city's centre. Since the re-organisation of New Zealand local government in 1989 it has been inside the Dunedin City Council area. Mosgiel has a p ...

Otago Otago (, ; ) is a regions of New Zealand, region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island and administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local go ...

, in 1959 and raised in

Wainuiomata Wainuiomata () is a large Commuter town, dormitory suburb of Lower Hutt, in the Wellington#Wellington metropolitan area, Wellington metropolitan area in New Zealand. Its population was estimated as being as of with a density of 1,600 people ...

. Kós attended

Naenae College Naenae College, is a state-run Mixed-sex education, coeducational secondary school located in north-central Lower Hutt, New Zealand. It is situated on a site in the suburb of Avalon, New Zealand, Avalon. The school was founded in 1953 to serve t ...

. He matriculated at the

Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington (), also known by its shorter names "VUW" or "Vic", is a public university, public research university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of New Zealand Parliament, Parliament, and w ...

to study law in 1976 where he later graduated LLB(Hons) in 1981 where he won the Chapman Tripp Prize for his graduating year. After graduating from

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

(

Sidney Sussex College Sidney Sussex College (historically known as "Sussex College" and today referred to informally as "Sidney") is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. The College was founded in 1 ...

) in 1985 with an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

, Kós began a career in commercial litigation. In 1985, he became a partner in Perry Wylie Pope & Page, and later a partner in

Russell McVeagh Russell McVeagh is a New Zealand law firm with offices in Auckland and Wellington. It is one of New Zealand's largest law firms and is ranked highly by law firm ranking guides such as ''The Legal 500'' and ''Chambers and Partners''. History Jo ...

in 1988. He went to the independent bar in 2005 and was appointed as a

Queen's Counsel A King's Counsel (Post-nominal letters, post-nominal initials KC) is a senior lawyer appointed by the monarch (or their Viceroy, viceregal representative) of some Commonwealth realms as a "Counsel learned in the law". When the reigning monarc ...

in 2007. He founded Stout Street Chambers, a leading set of barristers, in 2007 with three other QCs.Stout Street Chambers
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Judicial career

In April 2011, Kós was appointed to the

High Court of New Zealand The High Court of New Zealand () is the superior court of New Zealand. It has general jurisdiction and responsibility, under the Senior Courts Act 2016, as well as the High Court Rules 2016, for the administration of justice throughout New Zeala ...

. He was elevated to the Court of Appeal in September 2015, and succeeding

Ellen France Dame Ellen Dolour France (née Larkin; born 1956) is a New Zealand jurist. She is currently a justice of the Supreme Court, and was previously the president of the Court of Appeal. Biography Ellen Dolour Larkin was born to parents who were ...

as President of the court in July 2016. As President, he focused on revising the rules of the Court and reforming its processes, introducing a policy to encourage junior counsel to address the Court, and creating three-week sessions of the Permanent Court, followed by two-week circuits by Divisional Courts (with writing time for other judges). He established regular divisional sittings in Christchurch and Dunedin and more Permanent Court sittings on cases of public interest in Auckland. He also led the project to establish a branch of the Court in the heritage precinct at the

Auckland High Court The Auckland High Court is a Gothic Revival courthouse in central Auckland, New Zealand. It is one of three locations nationwide used by the High Court of New Zealand. It is registered as a Category I heritage building by Heritage New Zealand. ...

, which opened in 2020. On 8 April 2022, it was announced that Kós would be appointed a judge to the

He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Victoria University Law School. He was formerly Pro-Chancellor of

Massey University Massey University () is a Public university, public research university in New Zealand that provides internal and distance education. The university has campuses in Auckland, Palmerston North, and Wellington. Data from Universities New Zealand ...

. He was the 2022/23 James Merralls Fellow at Melbourne University Law School.In June 2024 he was made an Honorary Bencher of the

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court entitled to Call to the bar, call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple (with whi ...

. In the 2023 King's Birthday and Coronation Honours, Kós was appointed a

Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit The New Zealand Order of Merit () is an order of merit in the New Zealand royal honours system. It was established by royal warrant (document), royal warrant on 30 May 1996 by Elizabeth II, Monarchy of New Zealand, Queen of New Zealand, "for th ...

, for services to the judiciary and legal education.

Notable cases

Justice Kós wrote the judgments in a number of notable cases: in criminal law he wrote the guideline judgment on serious drug offence sentencing (''Zhang v R''), on mental health deficits as a mitigating factor in sentencing generally (''Orchard v R'') and judgments in appeals concerning the manslaughter of 3 year-old Moko Rangitoheriri (''Shailer v R'') and the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane (''Kempson v R''), in civil and public law he has written leading judgments on fiduciary duties and economic duress (''Dold v Murphy'') the doctrine of penalties (''Wilaci Pty Ltd v Torchlight Fund, 127 Hobson Street Ltd v Honey Bees Preschool Ltd''), defamation (''Hagaman v Little, Craig v MacGregor'') and prospective costs and Beddoe orders in trusts cases (''Woodward v Smith, McCallum v McCallum), a'' judgment in which Kos sought to rein in background evidence admissible in a contract interpretation case did not survive further appeal to the Supreme Court (''Bathurst Resources Ltd v L&M Coal Holdings Ltd''). In the Supreme Court he dissented in the voting rights case, holding that the 18-year qualification threshold in the Electoral Act was not inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act (''Make it 16 Incorporated v Attorney-General'').

Extra-judicial writing

Justice Kós has written in three particular areas:

Civil remedies

As co-author of ''Butler's Equity and Trusts in New Zealand'' and ''Blanchard's Civil Remedies in New Zealand''.

Civil and criminal justice reform

In 2016 he advocated a civil law

inquisitorial An inquisitorial system is a legal system in which the court, or a part of the court, is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case. This is distinct from an adversarial system, in which the role of the court is primarily that of an ...

approach for unrepresented litigants, to improve access to justice. In 2018 he gave a speech to Victim Support advocating new approaches to sentencing and corrections, in particular changes to home detention and prison sentencing.

Legal history

Kós has written extensively on connections between legal and political history – on New Zealand's nuclear treaty cases in the

International Court of Justice The International Court of Justice (ICJ; , CIJ), or colloquially the World Court, is the only international court that Adjudication, adjudicates general disputes between nations, and gives advisory opinions on International law, internation ...

, constitutional law (and the case of ''

Fitzgerald v Muldoon ''Fitzgerald v Muldoon and Others'' is a 1976 High Court of New Zealand, New Zealand Supreme Court case concerning whether press statements by Robert Muldoon had breached section 1 of the Bill of Rights 1689, Bill of Rights 1688. In its decision ...

''),Burrows and Finn ''Challenge And Change – Judging in Aotearoa New Zealand'' (2022) ch 6. on appellate history, and on jurisprudential differences between New Zealand and Australia.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kos, Stephen Living people High Court of New Zealand judges Court of Appeal of New Zealand judges Supreme Court of New Zealand judges 20th-century New Zealand lawyers Alumni of the University of Cambridge New Zealand people of Hungarian descent Victoria University of Wellington alumni 1959 births 21st-century New Zealand judges Knights Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit New Zealand King's Counsel 21st-century King's Counsel People educated at Naenae College