Alice Erh-Soon Tay (1934–2004) was an Australian academic lawyer, an eminent jurisprudence and comparative law scholar. She was president of the Australian

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of the Commonwealth of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body ...

from 1998 to 2003.

Early life and education

Tay was born in Singapore in 1934. She was admitted to the Singapore Bar in 1957 and practiced as a criminal lawyer. In 1959 she moved to the new law department at the University of Malaya (now the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national university, national Public university, public research university in Singapore. It was officially established in 1980 by the merging of the University of Singapore and Nanyang University ...

). She moved to Australia in 1961. Four years later she obtained her PhD from the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

Professional career

Tay had a long academic career at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

, with 26 years as the

Challis Professor The Challis Professorship are professorships at the University of Sydney named in honour of John Henry Challis, an Anglo-Australian merchant, landowner and philanthropist, whose bequests to the University of Sydney allowed for their establishmen ...

of Jurisprudence from 1975. She was a part-time Commissioner of the

Australian Law Reform Commission The Australian Law Reform Commission (often abbreviated to ALRC) is an Australian independent statutory body established to conduct reviews into the law of Australia. The reviews, also called inquiries or references, are referred to the ALRC by ...

from 1982 to 1987. During her time at the ALRC, she contributed to several major inquiries — including The Recognition of Aboriginal Customary Laws (ALRC 31, 1986); Privacy (ALRC 22, 1983); Contempt (ALRC 35, 1987) and Matrimonial Property (ALRC 39, 1987). In 1985, Tay was made a Member of the Order of Australia, for her contributions to teaching and research in law. She was elected a Fellow of the

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) is an independent, non-governmental organisation devoted to the advancement of knowledge and research in the social sciences. It has its origins in the Social Science Research Council of Aus ...

in 1986 and was awarded an LLD (honoris causa) from the University of Edinburgh in 1989.

Personal life

Tay married political philosopher and Marxist scholar

Eugene Kamenka Eugene Kamenka (4 March 1928 – 19 January 1994) was an Australian political philosopher and Marxism, Marxist scholar. Biography Kamenka was born in Cologne in 1928 and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1937. He was of Russian-Jewish ...

after her arrival in Australia. He died in 1994 and she remarried Guenther Doeker-Mach shortly before her death in April 2004.

Tributes

A street in the Canberra suburb of

Watson Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) is an ultraviolet Raman spectrometer that uses fine-scale imaging and an ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy, and detect orga ...

is named after her. The gazetted notice of the

ACT Government The Government of the Australian Capital Territory, also referred to as the Australian Capital Territory Government or ACT Government, is the executive branch of the Australian Capital Territory. The leader of the party or coalition with the Con ...

noted her role in "court interventions regarding the

MV Tampa MV ''Tampa'' was a roll-on/roll-off container ship completed in 1984 by Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. in South Korea for the Norway-based firm, Wilhelmsen Lines Shipowning. In 2001, the vessel was at the centre of the Tampa affair when ...

". The Annual Alice Tay Lecture in Law and Human Rights was established in 2005 by the Herbert and Valmae Freilich Foundation at the

. This lecture was established to acknowledge both Tay's championship of human rights in Australia and her contributions as a member of the Foundation's board over a number of years.

References

External links

*
Alice Tay lectures at the Herbert & Valmae Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry at the ANU
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tay, Alice 1934 births 2004 deaths Australian people of Chinese descent Australian women lawyers Singaporean emigrants to Australia Members of the Order of Australia Australian National University alumni Academic staff of the University of Sydney Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Challis professor