Professor James Penner Appointed as the Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law

Professor James Penner has been appointed as the Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law with effect from 1 July 2017.

Professor Penner, who is also the Vice Dean for Research at the faculty, works primarily in the area of property and trusts, as well as law and theory. Prior to joining NUS Law in 2013, his publications included the prize-winning monograph The Idea of Property Law, and a sole-authored textbook. The former won the UK Society of Public Teachers of Law first prize for outstanding scholarship by a younger scholar. He succeeds Professor Kevin Gray, who has served with distinction as Kwa Geok Choo Professor of Property Law since his appointment in 2011.

“I am honoured and delighted to be appointed to this chair, and hope I can live up to this distinction in the exemplary way in which Professor Gray has, ” says Professor Penner.

Professor Penner is well-established as one of the world’s leading experts in the philosophy of property and the law of trusts, while also writing more widely in the areas of private law and the philosophy of law.

He is currently editing Property Theory: Legal and Political Perspectives, with Michael Otsuka of the LSE. The book will be a collection of papers from the property theory workshop Professor Penner hosted at NUS last year, to be published by Cambridge University Press. He is also completing the manuscript of Property Rights: A Re-Examination, a monograph to be published by Oxford University Press in 2018.

The Kwa Geok Choo Professorship in Property Law was launched on 5 July 2011 as a tribute to the late Madam Kwa Geok Choo, who was a leading property lawyer. She was a pioneer who started a law firm with Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his younger brother, and then went on to excel as a conveyancing lawyer, mentoring many others in the process.