About

The Honourable Dame Susan Glazebrook DNZM

Justice Glazebrook is a graduate of the University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau: DipBus (Finance), LLB (Hons), MA (First Class Honours). She also has a DPhil from the University of Oxford (Criminal Justice in Revolutionary France). Before studying at Oxford, she was a junior lecturer in History at the University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau.

After her return to Aotearoa/New Zealand from Oxford, Justice Glazebrook became a partner at a commercial law firm, specialising in tax and finance law. She also served on a number of commercial boards and government advisory committees. In 1998 Justice Glazebrook was the President of the InterPacific Bar Association, an organisation of business lawyers in the region.

Justice Glazebrook was appointed to the High Court | Te Kōti Matua in April 2000, to the Court of Appeal | Te Kōti Pīra in May 2002 and to the Supreme Court | Te Kōti Mana Nui in August 2012. She retired from that Court in February 2026, having reached the statutory retirement age. She is currently serving as an acting judge.

During her tenure as a judge, Justice Glazebrook was a member of the Advisory Council of Jurists for the Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (from 2002 to 2010) and, from 2007 to 2012, chaired the Institute of Judicial Studies | Te Kura Kaiwhakawā, the body responsible for judicial education in New Zealand. She is a past President of the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ). Since August 2021, Justice Glazebrook has been involved in efforts to evacuate and support women judges from Afghanistan as part of the Afghan Women Judges Support Committee of the IAWJ.

Justice Glazebrook is a Distinguished Alumni of the University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau, an Honorary Fellow of Victoria University of Wellington Law School | Te Herenga Waka – Te Kauhanganui Tātai Ture and an Honorary Bencher, Middle Temple. In 2014 she was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the judiciary.