Ho Hock Lai appointed the inaugural Coomaraswamy Professor of the Law of Evidence

Professor Ho Hock Lai ’89 (right)

NUS Law congratulates Ho Hock Lai ’89, who has been appointed as the inaugural Coomaraswamy Professor of the Law of Evidence with effect from 1 July 2020.

This new Chair was created in honour of the late Punch Coomaraswamy and his wife, Kaila Coomaraswamy. Punch Coomaraswamy was one of the founding members of the Faculty. From 1959 to 1969, he taught the law of evidence at the Faculty as a Visiting Lecturer while practising at the Singapore bar. He then went on to a career in public service as Speaker of Parliament, envoy to India, Australia and the United States, and a Judge of the High Court. The Coomaraswamy Professorship in the Law of Evidence has been endowed to advance Punch Coomaraswamy’s life-long love of the law of evidence, and to commemorate his commitment and contribution to equipping the Faculty’s first generation of students with a sound grasp of the theory, principles and application of the law of evidence in Singapore.

Hock Lai is a graduate of NUS Law, who went on to obtain a BCL from Oxford in 1993 and a PhD from Cambridge in 2003. He joined the Faculty in 1991 as a Senior Tutor in 1991 and progressed through the ranks to full professor in 2009. Along the way, he has held several leadership positions, including Director of CLE, Chair of FSC, and Chair of FPTC, as well as serving as a member of UPTC.

His research falls broadly in areas relating to evidence and procedure. Hock Lai’s books include A Philosophy of Evidence Law: Justice in the Search for Truth (OUP 2008), and Law, Virtue and Justice (edited with Amalia Amaya, Hart 2012). He has also published articles in leading general and specialist journals, including the Cambridge Law Journal, Criminal Law and Philosophy, International Journal of Evidence and Proof, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Legal Studies, and Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and his latest work on confessions is forthcoming in the Modern Law Review. He has also contributed to local scholarship, publishing regularly in the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies and the Singapore Academy of Law Journal.