ROBIN COOKE was arguably New Zealand’s most outstanding jurist, and certainly one who left his mark on wideranging aspects of its law. His liberal approach to the interpretation of the law made him a controversial figure but his intellect, scholarship and industry were widely acknowledged. This pre-eminence was recognised with a peerage in 1996, meaning he could sit as a member of the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords and continue to sit on the judicial committee of the Privy Council.

Robin Brunskill Cooke was the only son of Philip Cooke, a respected justice of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, himself the son of the crown prosecutor for Palmerston North. Educated in Wellington, Cooke won the highest tertiary entry from school, just beating the writer Janet Frame. He was awarded a law degree from Victoria University and won a New Zealand university travelling scholarship in 1950.

At Cambridge he became a visiting research fellow at Gonville and Caius and won the Yorke Prize. He was called to Inner Temple in 1954, and, instead of pursuing an academic career, returned to New Zealand and went into practice at the Wellington Bar. An early defamation case involving a government minister, although a loss, made his reputation. In 1964 he was the youngest New Zealander to take silk.

In 1972 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of New Zealand (now the High Court). In a disputed custody case in the early 1970s he found for a father, despite him having been jailed for perjury. At a time when even blameless men were denied custody in favour of the mother, this was a landmark decision. In 1976 Cooke was appointed to the New Zealand Court of Appeal and became Knight Bachelor the following year.

His dedication and appetite for work were prodigious. A local reporter saw him in chambers on Christmas Day 1985. He had lunched with his family and gone to finish a reserved judgment on a murder case. “We try to finish the year’s work before the end of the year,” he said. In 1986 he became the seventh President of the New Zealand Court of Appeal. The previous year he had delivered a judgment that led to an injunction to stop an All Blacks rugby tour of South Africa.

He came to embrace most areas of the law and to influence areas such as administrative law, equity and negligence in New Zealand in addition to criminal, family and employment law. His formidable intellect was complemented by a liberal humanitarianism. Among his more controversial legacies are his judgments on the historic Treaty of Waitangi of 1840 and his robust interpretation of the rights of the Maori people.

Although he rejected as unjudicial the suggestion that he was a champion of Maori rights, he found that “reparation had to be made to the Maori people for past and continuing breaches of the treaty”. He was also a supporter of the New Zealand Bill of Rights.

He was not flamboyant by nature but exhibited considerable presence on the bench and did not suffer fools gladly. He could recall the names of every judge appointed to the New Zealand court since 1842, and in his judgments he quoted authorities as disparate as Cato, Mozart and Samuel Johnson, as well as 16th and 17th-century discourses. He wore a handkerchief in the sleeve of his jacket and in moments of intense concentration he could be seen chewing on the end of it. He would deliver judgments extempore, with his eyes shut, as clear, rational, perfectly formed prose tumbled from his mouth.

On his retirement, at the statutory age of 70 in 1996, Cooke was, with the support of some members of the Privy Council who were impressed by his contribution to that court, created a peer. This was a singular, though not unique, honour for a judge from the Commonwealth. He took the title Lord Cooke of Thorndon, the suburb in which he grew up. He was never a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary but heard some 100 cases at the request of the presiding law lord. His last case in 2001 was, fittingly, one involving Maori land rights and the haunting Maori waiata was sung in the Privy Council at the conclusion of his judicial work.

Although he sat on the Privy Council, he advocated its abolition as a court of last resort for New Zealand, believing that his country’s courts were sufficiently eminent and experienced to finally determine their own matters. He also played a part in the appellate courts of other Commonwealth countries such as Samoa, the Cook Islands, Kiribati and Fiji; as well as in post-handover Hong Kong.

Although a claim could be made for Sir John Salmond, solicitor-general, judge and author, as New Zealand’s greatest lawyer, Cooke was surely the finest jurist that country has produced.

In 2002 he was awarded the Order of New Zealand, an honour limited to 20 living New Zealanders. He is survived by his wife, Annette Miller, and their three sons.

Lord Cooke of Thorndon, PC, ONZ, New Zealand and Commonwealth jurist, was born on May 9, 1926. He died on August 30, 2006, aged 80.