Martha Karambu Koome (born 3 June 1960) is a Kenyan advocate who is currently serving as the chief justice of Kenya and is the first woman to occupy the post.

[1] When the JSC invited memoranda on her suitability for nomination, the president of the Law Society of Kenya submitted a complaint[10] accusing her of being an unfair arbiter, by ruling some specific court cases based on nepotism, favouritism and improper motive by ruling in favour of the executive arm of the Kenyan government for improper motive and sometimes based on ethnicity.

[10][11][12][13] Later, she instructed her lawyers to issue a demand to the LSK president to retract the law society's allegations against her within seven days, threatening to sue him over defamation arising from the complaints he submitted to the JSC.

[16][17] Once arguments in the case were concluded, the High Court scheduled the judgment for delivery on 25 October 2017, the eve of the repeat presidential election.

Chief Justice David Maraga issued special authority to the Judicial Review Division of the High Court in Nairobi to sit during the public holiday so that the judges could dispense with the scheduled judgment.

The three judges had ostensibly been called to sit by the then president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Paul Kihara Kariuki.

[18] The judges stayed the High Court Judgment, thereby giving the IEBC the green light to run the repeat presidential poll the following day.

When questioned about her role in this case during the interviews, she indicated that she had to comply with the directives of the president of the Court of Appeal who summoned her to sit, and that the sitting was important because it saved the country from a constitutional crisis,[19] alluding to the apparent lack of a provision in Kenya's laws for the extension of the term of the president where a repeat presidential election is not held within 60 days as demanded by the Constitution.

The Justice & Legal Affairs Committee of the National Assembly conducted her vetting hearing on 13 May[22] and recommended that the full house should approve her nomination.

Within hours of Parliament's approval vote, President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed her on 19 May 2021, as the chief justice of the Republic of Kenya.