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The Honourable the Chief Justice Truth'soutthere/sandbox1
3rd Chief Justice of Singapore
In office 11 April 2006 – 5 November 2012
Appointed by	S. R. Nathan
Preceded by	Yong Pung How
Succeeded by	Sundaresh Menon
Attorney-General of Singapore
In office 1 May 1992 – 10 April 2006
Appointed by	Wee Kim Wee
Preceded by	Tan Boon Teik
Succeeded by	Chao Hick Tin
Judge of the Supreme Court of Singapore
In office 1 July 1988 – 1 May 1992
Appointed by	Wee Kim Wee
Judicial Commissioner of Singapore
In office 1 July 1986 – 1 July 1988
Appointed by	Wee Kim Wee
Personal details
Born	(1937-11-05) 5 November 1937 Ipoh, Perak, Federated Malay States (now Malaysia)
Nationality	Singaporean
Alma mater	National University of Singapore

In this Chinese name, the family name is Chan (simplified Chinese: 陈; traditional Chinese: 陳; pinyin: Chén; Jyutping: Can4).

Chan Sek Keong (simplified Chinese: 陈锡强; traditional Chinese: 陳錫強; pinyin: Chén Xīqiáng; Jyutping: Can4 Sek3 Koeng5; born 5 November 1937) is the current Chief Justice of Singapore, having taken over from the former Chief Justice Yong Pung How on 11 April 2006. Chan was formerly the Attorney-General of Singapore, before being succeeded by Chao Hick Tin on 11 April 2006.

Early life and education

Chan Sek Keong was born on 5 November 1937 in Ipoh, Perak, in the Federated Malay States (now Malaysia), the third of five children. His father was a bank clerk in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. When the Japanese occupation of Malaya began during World War II, they fled to Taiping to stay with his grandfather.

Chan received his early education in King Edward VII School in Taiping together with his elder brother, and continued at the Anderson School when they moved back to Ipoh after the war ended in 1945. Chan, who was then eight years old, was placed together with other children who had missed entering school at the usual age of six years. At the time, Anderson School was the premier government school in Ipoh equivalent to the Raffles Institution of Singapore. He was happy in school, and mixed well with students from other races. In 1955, Chan scored eight distinctions for his Senior Cambridge School Certificate examinations – one of the best in Malaya that year. He was offered a teaching bursary. However, as becoming a teacher was not what he envisaged, he continued on to the Sixth Form to try to get a place in the university.

In his second year of the Sixth Form course, his English literature teacher Dr. Etherton told him that a professor of law from the University of Malaya (now the National University of Singapore (NUS)) would be visiting the school to encourage students in the form to take up a new law course offered by the University. Etherton saw Chan's potential for law and urged him to try for it. Chan, unaware about the career prospects a law degree could offer, took Etherton's advice and went for an interview conducted by Professor Lee Sheridan.

Legal education and training

Along with the other students, Chan was a member of the inaugural batch of students admitted to the Law Faculty of the University of Malaya in 1957. He graduated in 1961 and began his career with Messrs Bannon & Bailey in Kuala Lumpur as a pupil of Peter Mooney. Six months later he learned that the law degree he had graduated with was not yet recognized for admission to the Bar as the necessary legislation had not been enacted yet. As soon as the legislation was passed, Chan applied to the Bar Council of Malaysia to ask for the period of pupillage he was required to serve be shortened. Following a rejection of the request, Chan petitioned the court against the Bar Council's decision. R. Ramani, a leading advocate and Chairman of the Bar Council, appeared personally to object to Chan's petition on the ground that he had provided only one reason for abridgment of time when the relevant provision in the legislation referred to "reasons". On 31 January 1962, Justice Ong Hock Thye ruled in Chan's favour, holding that the provision should be interpreted to include situations where there was only one reason for reducing the length of a pupillage stint.

Career

After being admitted to the Bar, Chan practiced as a lawyer for a number of years, first with Bannon & Bailey in Kuala Lumpur and then with Braddell Brothers and Shook Lin & Bok in Singapore. On 1 July 1986, he was appointed the first Judicial Commissioner of Singapore. Two years later, he became a Judge of the Supreme Court of Singapore.

In 1992, he was appointed Attorney-General of Singapore. During this time, he reformed the Attorney-General's Chambers by establishing its International Affairs Division and Law Reform and Revision Division.

In his capacity as Attorney-General, in 1997 he submitted an opinion to the Government of Singapore that although the Parliamentary Elections Act forbade unauthorized persons to loiter within 200 metres of polling stations on polling day, this did not apply to unauthorized persons who were inside the stations. Chan was asked to render this opinion following a complaint by the Workers' Party of Singapore that during the 1997 general election former People's Action Party Members of Parliament had loitered in polling stations.

Chan relinquished the position of Attorney-General on 11 April 2006 when he was appointed Chief Justice of Singapore, following Yong Pung How's retirement.

He was reappointed Chief Justice on 11 April 2009.

On 29 August 2012, the Prime Minister's Office announced that Chan would be stepping down as Chief Justice on the day following his 75th birthday, 6 November, and that the office would be assumed by Sundaresh Menon. Paying tribute to Chan, NUS law professor Michael Hor said that he had "brought the judiciary, and with it the legal system, of Singapore to a level of excellence which is easily on par with, and in some respects, even above the best legal systems of the world". In his view, the Chief Justice would be remembered for "his preponderant sense of evenhandedness. ... One came away from an encounter with the CJ satisfied that he had carefully considered and weighed everything that had been said, although he may not have ultimately agreed with what had been said". Senior Counsel Wong Meng Meng, the President of the Law Society of Singapore, said that "[t]he Bar is especially grateful to CJ Chan for the exemplary judicial temperament he displayed throughout his tenure and the grace and respect extended to lawyers who appeared before him."

Chan has said that his life philosophy can be summed up in the phrase "live and let live". As for his judicial philosophy, he is interested to "find, whenever possible, a practical solution to the problems that surface to the court, to try to met the needs of both parties. I no longer like to decide on the law just for the sake of it."

Awards and decorations

Chan was conferred the Darjah Utama Temasek (Order of Temasek) (Second Class) by the Government on 9 August 2008 for his outstanding contributions to the team representing Singapore in the Pedra Branca dispute against the Government of Malaysia before the International Court of Justice. The same month, he became the first Singaporean and local law graduate to become an honorary bencher of Lincoln's Inn.

On 21 November 2009, Chan became the first Asian jurist to be given the International Jurists Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the administration of justice which, according to International Council of Jurists president Adish Aggarwala, had "enhanced the dignity of the judiciary in Asian countries". The following year, on 5 July 2010, he was conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) by the National University of Singapore in recognition of his leadership of the judiciary and contributions towards the criminal justice system.

Selected works

• From Justice Model to Crime Control Model [address at the conference Criminal Justice Under Stress: Transnational Perspectives, New Delhi, India], Lee Ka Shing Library, Singapore Management University, 24 November 2006, archived from the original (PDF) on 1 September 2012.
• "Securing and Maintaining the Independence of the Court in Judicial Proceedings", Singapore Academy of Law Journal, 22: 229–251, 2010, archived from the original (PDF) on 9 August 2010.
• "Judicial Review – from Angst to Empathy: A Lecture to Singapore Management University Second Year Law Students", Singapore Academy of Law Journal, 22: 469–489, 2010, archived from the original (PDF) on 1 December 2011.
• "Cross-border Insolvency Issues Affecting Singapore", Singapore Academy of Law Journal, 23: 413–433, 2011, archived from the original (PDF) on 1 September 2012.

References

• Kwek, Mean Luck (3 August 2006), "In Conversation with Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong" (PDF), Inter Se (reproduced on the Legal Service Commission website), archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2007.

External links

• Judges, Judicial Commissioners and Registrars on the official website of the Supreme Court of Singapore