I chanced across a copy of the December
2012 Edition of Law Link while I was at the Oei Tiong Ham building making a reservation
for a classroom for my varsity Christian fellowship cell group meet. A featured
article was a short biography of former Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong. The
caption written for the title was “The Accidental Lawyer”. From my reading of
it, there were many instances by which Chan Sek Keong could have ended up not
being the Chief Justice of Singapore.
The article wrote that in 1961, Mr Chan
was in the pioneer batch of law graduates from the then University of Malaya,
the forerunner of the National University of Singapore. In public service, he
was appointed Singapore’s first judicial commissioner in 1986. In 1992, he was
also the first local graduate to become the Attorney-General. But the article
wrote, that all this was far from his mind when he decided to settle in
Singapore after he was called to the Bar in Malaysia. In an email interview
with LawLink, Chan Sek Keong explained why he ended up practicing in Singapore:
“Because the girl I was courting, and later married, was living in Singapore.”
Another point describing Chan’s date
with destiny was that he “became a law student by accident”. He had already
been admitted into the arts faculty of the University of Malaya in Singapore
for the term of Sept 1957 – when Dr Lional Astor Sheridian, the first Professor
of Law and Head of the Law Department, travelled to his school in Ipoh to
recruit students for the new law course. Chan said, “My English Literature
teacher, Dr A Etherton, pulled me aside one day and told me that I should study
law instead of some arts subject, like History or Economics, as I had a ‘crafty’
(in the good sense of the word) mind….Since in those days, I thought that the
teacher knew best about his students’ intellectual ability, I acted as advised.”
On another count, after Mr Chan graduated,
he applied for admission to the Malayan Bar. The Bar Council objected to his
application to abridge the period of pupilage he had to serve under the delayed
legislation recognizing the LL.B (Hons) degree. The Bar Council of the
Federation of Malaya, represented by its Chairman, opposed the petition on the
ground that the Advocates and Solicitors Ordinance required that the applicant
to show that he had sufficient “reasons” to justify an abridgement of time. He
argued that Mr Chan could muster up just one reason, ie:delay in the passing of
the legislation.
The Bar Council’s objection was rejected
by Justice H T Ong, a judge who later became Chief Justice of the States of
Malaya.
The article describes that this
experience set the tone for Mr Chan’s career in the judiciary, who was said to
be a fair judge who keeps a close eye on fairness and justice as he navigates a
field of legal technicalities.
From my reading of this short biography
of Chan Sek Keong, I guess it shows how one’s destiny in life is a confluence
of both personal capabilities and chance. Chan Sek Keong was certainly a
brilliant and highly intelligent person. It was described of him in the article
that “He came to law school armed with a sharp memory, which he is legendary
for.” But there are all the little things which affected his life decisions,
the absence of which could have made him chose differently. If he had not
fallen in love while in his time in the University of Malaya, perhaps he might
have chose to practice in Malaysia instead. And he might not have chosen to
study law if not for the advice of his English Literature teacher. But it was
for the best that he did, and he certainly shaped Singapore law for the better.
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