Leong Wai Kum, Chin Tet Yung, and Robert Beckman appointed as Emeritus Professors

(L-R) Leong Wai Kum, Chin Tet Yung, Robert Beckman

NUS Law is delighted to announce that Professor Leong Wai Kum, Associate Professor Chin Tet Yung, and Associate Professor Robert Beckman have been appointed as Emeritus Professors in recognition of their distinguished careers at the Faculty and outstanding contributions to the field of law.

Professor Leong Wai Kum is synonymous with Family Law in Singapore and her book Elements of Family Law is now the definitive textbook on the subject. Her 40-year career at NUS Law is distinguished by her significant influence on the development of Family Law, and she has groomed many of today’s leading practitioners and lawmakers. She has also been active in law reform, participating in every major review of family law in Singapore’s history. In 1979, she proposed the creation of a new Family Court — something that was finally realised in a second round of reforms in 1995. She also made important recommendations on child maintenance that were adopted far more quickly. Other contributions include the treatment of transgender persons under Singapore law, presumptions of legitimacy within marriage, guardianship law, and division of matrimonial assets. Last year, in the case of BOI v BOJ, the Court of Appeal was faced with a novel question of whether lottery winnings constitute a matrimonial asset. The Court chose to turn to academic literature before reviewing the case law on point: “Whilst this might appear unusual, we adopt this approach because at least one significant case relies on the relevant legal literature. We also note that the relevant legal literature is by the leading scholar on family law in Singapore, Prof Leong Wai Kum.”

Associate Professor Chin Tet Yung holds degrees from London, LSE and Oxford and has devoted his professional life to NUS Law. He taught a variety of subjects, ranging from compulsory modules such as Criminal Law, Jurisprudence, and Contract Law to pioneering electives of their time such as Computer Law and Information Technology Law. He was involved in drafting some of Singapore’s IT legislation, including the Computer Misuse Act and was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2006. Among other roles, he chaired the Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Home Affairs and Law as well as serving on the Information and the Arts GPC and Communications and Transport GPC. Within NUS Law, he served as Dean of the Faculty from 1992 to 2001, a period that saw the launch of exchange programmes with partner universities around the world and the establishment of our first two research centres: APCEL and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, succeeded today by the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business.

Associate Professor Robert Beckman has played a transformative role to many of Singapore’s international lawyers and the many international students with whom he has taught. His pioneering work on the Jessup Moot led NUS Law to a record number of victories, but also raised the profile of international law. He has developed a global reputation as a scholar of Ocean Law, and as an expert on the South China Sea, is routinely called on by academics, governments, and media to write and to speak on this and other topics. He joined NUS in 1977 and has contributed greatly to the institution through important service roles. As Vice Dean from 2001 to 2006, he helped bring in a radical overhaul of education to embrace skills training and experiential learning. He also served as the founding Director of the Centre for International Law from 2009 to 2016, where he built the new Centre and secured permanent funding from the Attorney-General’s Chambers to guarantee its future.