Tan Boon Teik

Tan Boon Teik (17 January 1929 – 10 March 2012) was a Singaporean judge who served as the second attorney-general of Singapore between 1969 and 1992.

At the age of 39, Tan was the youngest person to be appointed as attorney-general, and was the longest-serving attorney-general after the Independence of Singapore, after 25 years in office.

Tan was born on 17 January 1929 in Penang, Straits Settlements (now part of Malaysia), and had his secondary education at the Penang Free School.

He graduated from University College London with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree with honours in 1951, and later a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in 1953.

Tan attended University College London before he was called to the Bar in 1952 as a barrister-at-law of England and Wales by Middle Temple, and became an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court of the Federation of Malaya in 1954.

He was a barrister-at-law of England and Wales, having been called to the Bar by Middle Temple in 1952, and became an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court of the Federation of Malaya in 1954.

He joined the Singapore Legal Service in 1955 as a police court magistrate.

Initially in private legal practice in Penang after being called to the Bar there, Tan joined the Singapore Legal Service in 1955 as a police court magistrate, and subsequently served as Deputy Registrar and Sheriff of the High Court (appointed November 1956), the Director of the Legal Aid Bureau (1959), and Senior Crown Counsel (1963).

He was subsequently appointed Deputy Registrar and Sheriff of the High Court in 1956, Director of the Legal Aid Bureau in 1959, and Senior Crown Counsel in 1963.

He also taught part-time at the University of Singapore when it was started in 1956.

He also taught part-time at the Faculty of Law of the University of Singapore when it was started in 1956.

Between 1961 and 1962, he held a Rockefeller Research Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London.

In 1961, he represented Singapore at the Seminar on the Protection of Human Rights in the Administration of Criminal Justice organised by the United Nations in Wellington, New Zealand.

He became Solicitor-General in 1963, Acting Attorney-General in 1967, and Attorney-General in 1969.

During his tenure, he prepared many legal opinions on important constitutional and administrative law issues, and was also the Government's lead counsel in a number of notable cases.

With effect from 1 September 1963, he became the Solicitor-General, succeeding T. Kulasekaram who had been appointed a Supreme Court judge.

Where public international law matters were concerned, in 1966 Tan attended the Sixth Committee on International Law at the 21st Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and chaired a meeting of law ministers to review extradition arrangements among Commonwealth nations at Marlborough House, London, in 1982.

He also regularly attended Commonwealth Law Ministers' Conferences and ASEAN Law Association Conferences.

He was then appointed Acting Attorney-General from 1 February 1967 to 31 December 1968, and as Attorney-General from 1 January 1969 to 30 April 1992.

Tan was 39 years old when he became Attorney-General, and is believed to have been the youngest person to hold this post.

In the 1970s, the financial collapse of two companies, Gemini Chit Fund Corporation and Stallion Corporation, led to criminal charges being brought against their executives.

The companies operated chit funds, which were schemes in which investors paid sums of money by instalments to the companies in exchange for the entitlement to be allotted a larger return from the fund.

The allotment was determined by lot or by auction.

Following their collapse, it was estimated that 40,000 investors had lost about S$50 million.

Under Tan's leadership of the Attorney-General's Chambers, Gemini's managing director Abdul Gaffar Mohamed Ibrahim pleaded guilty to criminal breach of trust of $3.2 million and was sentenced to life imprisonment, and its chairman V.K.S. Narayanan received nine months' imprisonment for two charges under the Companies Act.

Stallion's executive director Martin Ler Cheng Seng pleaded guilty to authorising his firm to unlawfully bid at a Stallion chit fund sale, and was jailed for a year.

He was also the Government's lead counsel in a number of notable cases, including Lee Mau Seng v. Minister for Home Affairs (1971), which involved four executives of the Nanyang Siang Pau (South Seas Business Newspaper), a Chinese-language newspaper, who had been detained without trial under the Internal Security Act ("ISA") for "glamorising communism and stirring up communal and chauvinistic sentiments over Chinese language, education and culture".

Upon an application by the detainees for habeas corpus, the High Court held that the President, when acting on Cabinet's advice to detain a person under the ISA, exercises a subjective discretion as to whether the person is a risk to national security, which is not justiciable by the courts.

Tan was conferred the Darjah Utama Bakti Cemerlang (Distinguished Service Order) in 1978.

The Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) published the first reprint of the Constitution in 1980, and revised editions of Singapore statutes in 1970 and 1985.

While Tan headed the Attorney-General's Chambers, it published the first reprint of the Constitution in 1980, and revised editions of Singapore statutes in 1970 and 1985.

Tan also successfully brought proceedings for scandalising the court against Wong Hong Toy, the Chairman of the Workers' Party of Singapore, in 1983, and against respondents involved in publishing, printing and distributing articles that appeared in the Asian Wall Street Journal in 1985 and 1991.

Although the judgment was later disapproved by the Court of Appeal in Chng Suan Tze v. Minister for Home Affairs (1988), in 1989 Parliament amended the Constitution and the ISA to "freeze" the law relating to detentions under the Act to that applying in Singapore on the date when Lee Mau Seng was decided.

He was appointed Senior Counsel in 1989, and made an Officer of the French Legion of Honour in 1998.

Tan suffered from Parkinson's disease towards the end of his life.

In 1990, it launched LawNet, a computer database then containing the full text of Singapore legislation.

Tan was involved in the establishment of the Singapore Academy of Law, and was the first chairman of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, a post he held between 1991 and 1999.

Following internal bleeding, he died on 10 March 2012.

As of 10 March 2012, he was the longest serving Attorney-General of post-independence Singapore, having held office for just over 25 years.

During his tenure, he prepared many legal opinions on important constitutional and administrative law issues.