Joyce Luther Kennard (b. May 6, 1941) is currently an associate justice on the California Supreme Court (appointed 1989). She was born in the province of West Java in Indonesia and is of Dutch, Indonesian, German, and Chinese ancestry. English is not her native language; she speaks it with a slight Dutch accent.

She immigrated to Los Angeles in 1961 and worked as a secretary while earning her bachelor's degree (she majored in the German language) and her law degree at the University of Southern California.

When she was a teenager, one of her legs had been to be amputated below the knee because of a tumor; she walks with the help of a prosthesis.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that when she was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol in 1999 on suspicion of drunk driving, some of her friends thought that the CHP had mistaken her awkward gait and odd intonation as signs of intoxication.