Lady Justice Martha Koome was nominated to Kenya’s first woman Chief Justice on April 27, 2021 by the Judicial Service Commission. On May 21, she was sworn in as the first female Chief Justice in Kenya. Prior to her new job, Lady Justice Martha Koome was a judge at the Court of Appeal.
Lady Justice Koome joined the Judiciary in 2003 and served in several stations, among them Nakuru and Nairobi, before she was elevated the Court of Appeal in 2011. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Family Division of the High Court.
In 2020, she was the runner-up for the 2020 UN in Kenya Person of the Year, a recognition for her children rights advocacy.
During the vetting of judges and magistrates in 2012, Justice Koome chose to be interviewed in public. She readily acknowledged that corruption was rampant in courts, stating that when in private practice she had given up on criminal law because of its pervasiveness.
Lady Justice Koome was born to a peasant family in Kithiu Village in Miragamieru in Meru county. She has 33 years of experience in legal practice under her belt and a significant portion of those years has been in public service as a defender of human rights.
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“I grew up in rural areas in Meru in a village so I am a villager to the truest sense. My parents were peasant farmers and we were 18 children from two mothers. So, for all of us especially girls, it was a struggle to overcome the odds, but by grace of God, I was able to go to school and graduated from the University of Nairobi in 1986 with a Bachelor’s degree in Law, proceeded to the Kenya School of law and attained a Postgraduate diploma in law in 1987 being admitted to the Bar as an advocate the same year,” she describes herself. She then proceeded to do Masters in Law in the University of London graduating in 2010 with a master’s degree in Public International Law
