Sir Joseph Victor Williams (born 1961) is a New Zealand lawyer and judge. He has been a justice of the Supreme Court of New Zealand since 2019, and is the first MÃÂori person appointed to the role.
Williams was brought up in Hastings by a great-uncle and a great-aunt alongside his cousins. He is of NgÃÂti Pà «kenga and Te Arawa descent. By 14, he was working in the freezing works to contribute to the family income.
Williams won a scholarship and was educated at Lindisfarne College. He went on to study at Victoria University of Wellington, where he first studied MÃÂori language and then law. He graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Laws degree from Victoria, and later with a Master of Laws with first-class honours in indigenous rights law from the University of British Columbia. He had worked as a junior law lecturer at Victoria University before studying his master's degree.
In the 1980s, Williams was a musician as a member of the NgÃÂhiwi Apanui-led band Aotearoa, known for their bilingual Pacific reggae song "Maranga Ake Ai" (1985).
Williams contributed to the legal team for the 1985 Treaty of Waitangi claim which led to the adoption of te reo MÃÂori as an official language of New Zealand. In 1988 he joined Kensington Swan, where he specialised in MÃÂori issues and environmental law. He became a partner at Kensington Swan in 1992, leaving in 1994 to coâÂÂfound Walters Williams & Co.
In 1999, at the age of 38, he became the youngest person to be appointed Chief Judge of the MÃÂori Land Court. In 2004, Williams was appointed the Chairperson of the Waitangi Tribunal after acting in that role for several years.
In 2008, he was appointed a Justice of the High Court of New Zealand. In 2017, he became the first Te Reo MÃÂori speaker appointed to the Court of Appeal. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of New Zealand in May 2019, succeeding William Young. Williams is the first MÃÂori person to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
Williams is a former Vice-President of the MÃÂori Law Society, and a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. He has written about tikanga MÃÂori and New Zealand law. His future vision for New Zealand law is for a time "when tikanga MÃÂori fuses with New ZealandâÂÂs common law tradition to form a hybrid law of Aotearoa that could be developed by judges, case by base." He gave the Ivan Kwok lecture in 2022 where he set out his views on the government's Treaty of Waitangi partnerships with MÃÂori and the struggle of government to give effect to its treaty commitments.
In the 2020 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the judiciary. His investiture ceremony took place in April 2021 at his home marae in the Coromandel town of Manaia.