Kenneth Jacobs

Who is Kenneth Jacobs?

Sir Kenneth Sydney Jacobs KBE, Australian judge, was a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

Jacobs was born in 1917 in Gordon, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. He was educated at Knox Grammar School, and later studied at the University of Sydney, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1938.

During World War II, from 1940 to 1945, Jacobs served in the Second Australian Imperial Force. He enlisted in Paddington in 1939, and remained in the service until 1948. Following his return from the war, Jacobs returned to the University of Sydney where he completed a Bachelor of Laws degree, winning the university's Medal for Law in 1946, and graduating in 1947. Later that year, Jacobs was admitted to the New South Wales Bar, where he practised as a barrister, and in 1958 he was made a Queen's Counsel.

In 1960 Jacobs was appointed as a Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. In 1963, Jacobs was selected to serve a three-year term in Cyprus as the neutral presiding judge of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Cyprus, which was to be established following attempts to establish a constitution.