Early life and education
Chan was born in 1937 in Ipoh,Malaya as the third of five children in an ethnic Chinese family of Cantonese descent in Canton. His father was a clerk in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. During World War II,Chan and his family fled from Ipoh to Taiping to live with his grandfather.
Along with his elder brother,Chan received his early education in King Edward VII School in Taiping. When the war ended in 1945,he returned to Ipoh and continued studying at Anderson School. Chan,who was then eight years old,was placed 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. In school,he interacted well with students of other ethnicities. 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 a teaching career was not what he envisaged,he continued on to the sixth form in hopes of securing a place in a university.
During his second year of the sixth form course,Chan heard from his English literature teacher,Dr. Alan Etherton,that a law professor from the University of Malaya 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 go for it. Chan,unaware about the career prospects that a law degree could offer,heeded Etherton's advice and went for an interview conducted by Professor Lee Sheridan. [3]
Career
After being admitted to the bar on 31 January 1962,Chan practised 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 before being appointed the first Judicial Commissioner of Singapore on 1 July 1986. Two years later,he became a Judge of the Supreme Court of Singapore.
In 1992,Chan was appointed Attorney-General. Acting in this capacity in 1997,he submitted an opinion to the Singapore government that although the Parliamentary Elections Act forbade unauthorised persons to loiter within 200 metres of polling stations on polling day,this did not apply to unauthorised persons who were inside the stations. Chan was asked to render this opinion following a complaint by the Workers' Party that during the 1997 general election former People's Action Party Members of Parliament had loitered in polling stations. [4]
Chan relinquished the position of Attorney-General on 11 April 2006 when he was appointed Chief Justice. He retired in 2012,having spent 26 years in legal service. In October 2013,he joined the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Law as its first Distinguished Fellow. The term of appointment is on an honorary basis and will be for an initial period of three years. As a Distinguished Fellow,Chan pursued research and writing projects. [5]
In October 2019,Chan called for a review of the constitutional validity of Section 377A. [6]
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