Born in Invercargill in New Zealand, Christine French studied at the University of Otago before going to Oxford to read for the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL). After Oxford, she returned to New Zealand and began to practise law, specialising in civil litigation and employment law. French was appointed a High Court Judge in 2008 and a Judge of the Court of Appeal in 2012. In 2024, she was appointed President of the New Zealand Court of Appeal. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 19 August 2025.
Christine French
New Zealand & Worcester 1981
Christine French in the Court library as a young lawyer returning home
Christine French age 4
Christine French at her Matriculation
Christine French after her last exam - 1983
Christine French- admission to the Bar in 1981- signing the roll with her father, brothers and brother-in-law
Christine French at the Opening of Parliament - 2017
Five Female Judges- 2025- Christine is wearing her grandmother’s suffragist badge in honour of the occasion
Christine French in 2024, wearing the new judges robe which replaced the red robes and wigs
'It was a very happy childhood'
I was the youngest of five children and we were a close-knit family. It was a very happy childhood. My parents’ ancestry on both sides came from Scotland, so we had a very strong Scottish background with a great emphasis on education. My grandmother on my mother’s side had been a suffragist and my own mother believed in the mantra that girls could do anything.
My father was a lawyer and my mother was a high school teacher, and they had a great influence on us all, even down to choice of career. We weren’t very imaginative: my sisters became teachers and my two brothers and I became lawyers. But when you see someone doing something that seems so worthwhile and very interesting and which they obviously enjoy, then it helps make those decisions.
We were quite heavily involved in church. I sang in the choir and even took Sunday School myself. In terms of other interests, I had a short-lived ballet career and then turned to speech and drama. Sport was also very important, and I competed at provincial and national level in swimming.
The first school I went to had a big influence on me. It was run by a woman who was English and was one of the first women to get a degree from Oxford and she instilled in us a love of English history and literature. In high school, my greatest claim to fame was that I won a national competition to pick the All Blacks team that was to tour England and Ireland. The prize was a trip to go over there and watch the games, and while we were in England, we visited Oxford. Little did I ever imagine I would end up studying there.
On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
I went on to the University of Otago to study law, because my brothers had already started on their legal careers and I could see they were enjoying it. I never once regretted that choice. I really loved studying law. I had very good teachers and they taught me close textual analysis of cases and how to improve my writing to make it clearer, and that has helped me when it comes to writing judgments A highlight was having my dissertation cited and relied on by the House of Lords in a judgment, and also by the Supreme Court of Canada.
I had always wanted to do postgraduate work in England, and my father had a school friend who had been a Rhodes Scholar, which was why I applied. My first interview was a bit of a disaster. I was nervous and I was also trying to give the answers the panel wanted to hear. But then, before the second interview, I had some superb advice from a former Rhodes Scholar which was essentially just to be myself and enjoy the day. Mine was the last interview of the day and by the time I got into it, I was totally relaxed and I’d had a lovely time wandering around the grounds and the house, because the interviews were in the Governor General’s residence in Wellington. When they announced I’d got the Scholarship, I sort of stood there like a stunned mullet!
‘Compared to some people, I was a slouch’
I was lucky when I arrived in the UK because I had cousins living there and they picked me up at Heathrow and took me to their place and then drove me to Oxford. It was still a big adjustment, but I relished the sense of history, the quaint traditions, and the beautiful buildings. My friends were largely from the swimming team or from my college. I never once regretted my choice of college, but Worcester had a significant percentage of public-school students, and it had only admitted women in 1979. I think I was the first female law graduate student.
I did the BCL and it was pretty amazing going to tutorials with some of the internationally recognised legal scholars. The higher-level thinking did inspire me, but compared to some people, I was a slouch. My excuse was that I felt the idea of the Rhodes Scholarship was not to focus exclusively on academic matters. So, I tried to make the most of my time at Oxford. I joined lots of clubs and societies, including the rambling club, which meant lots of weekends travelling around England. All in all, it was an amazing experience.
‘The courts are a place where might is not always right’
After Oxford, I returned to New Zealand and started working in Invercargill in my family’s law firm, French Burt Partners. For some people, that might be the stuff of nightmares but actually, it was wonderful. It meant unlimited mentoring on tap and the ability to get involved in major cases at a very early stage in my career. We had a strong client base of unions and that’s how I ended up doing a significant amount of employment-related work. My experience during those years has definitely shaped my thinking, because our clients were not the wealthy and powerful, and I saw that the courts are a place where might is not always right. A career highlight was appearing on my own without senior counsel in the Privy Council in Downing Street when New Zealand still retained the Privy Council as its final court. Being made partner in the firm wasn’t such a big deal for me, because when your father and brothers are the senior partners, it’s hardly a tale of a heroic struggle against discrimination. The best I did was to achieve the word ‘Sons’ being removed from the name of the firm.
I was appointed to the bench from Invercargill and was then asked to go to the High Court bench in Christchurch. There had never been a female High Court judge in the South Island, so I think the resident judges were a little bit apprehensive, but it all turned out very well and they were absolutely wonderful colleagues. We do have a lot of cases that are high profile – murder cases, or cases with a political overtone – but our job is to apply the law. If you reach decisions based on established legal principles and reasoning which are carefully explained, then you avoid being politicised.
There have definitely been changes during the time I’ve been on the bench. I think we’re subject to greater scrutiny and criticism from the media. More importantly, there has been the development of what’s called Tikanga, which relates to Māori customary laws and values and protocols that have shaped behaviour and decision making in the Māori world for centuries and which is now sometimes called a third source of law. Over my career, I’ve also seen the increased use of technology, and that’s making a difference to the way we operate.
There’s quite an adjustment from being a High Court Judge to being a judge in the Court of Appeal, because in the Court of Appeal, you usually sit in panels of threes, so you operate as a team to a significant extent. Being the President is a form of professional leadership, but among equals. One of the highlights of my presidency has been an historic occasion when for the first time in the court’s history, we had a bench of five comprised of all women judges. In honour of the occasion, I wore my grandmother’s suffragist badge.
The hardest thing I’ve dealt with is probably the experience of the Christchurch earthquakes. There was loss of life and very, very extensive damage, and ordinary life was just turned upside-down. You live it day by day, and it’s only when you look back that you realise just how difficult it was. But the upside was that there was tremendous neighbourly feeling, with everyone looking after everyone. I see that as a turning point. Ever since, life has no longer seemed quite so certain and stable.
‘Get into court as much as you can’
To those considering a legal career, I would say, first, get into court as much as you can. Second, don’t accept appointment too young, because it can be a gruelling job, and you’re a slave to the roster. And always hold yourself to a high standard and combine your professional expertise with empathy for others. I certainly haven’t come to my current role with any sort of personal agenda. I view judges as stewards of the law, drawing on the wisdom of past generations. At the same time, we also incrementally develop the law to meet changing social needs and changing societal values. Reflecting on my lifetime, the current period is probably a time when the rule of law has never been more important. If I can play a very small part in maintaining it, that is sufficient motivation and inspiration in itself.