Goh Yihan (born 1981) is a Deputy Attorney-General of Singapore. He was previously a Judge and a Judicial Commissioner of the

Supreme Court of Singapore The Supreme Court of Singapore is a set of courts in Singapore, comprising the Court of Appeal and the High Court. It hears both civil and criminal matters. The Court of Appeal hears both civil and criminal appeals from the High Court. The C ...

, and, immediately before that, an academic who last served as the Dean of the

Singapore Management University Singapore Management University (SMU) is a publicly funded private university in Singapore. Founded in 2000, SMU is the third oldest autonomous university in the country, modelling its education after the Wharton School. The university is trip ...

School of Law A law school (also known as a law centre/center, college of law, or faculty of law) is an institution, professional school, or department of a college or university specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for bec ...

Education

Goh graduated from the

National University of Singapore Faculty of Law The National University of Singapore Faculty of Law (NUS Law) is Singapore's oldest law school. NUS Law was initially established in 1956 as the Department of Law in the University of Malaya, and subsequently, University of Singapore. After its ...

with a

first class honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure used for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied, sometimes with significant var ...

LLB A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

in 2006 as the valedictorian. He also topped his second-year examinations and was on the NUS Undergraduate Scholarship. At the 2004 B. A. Mallal Moot, he won both the best oralist and best memorial prizes. Goh obtained his

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

in 2010. He had received the NUS University Overseas Scholarship in 2009 to pursue his postgraduate studies.

Career

Goh was called to the Singapore Bar in 2011. He had received the Order of Merit in the 2006

bar examination A bar examination is an examination administered by the bar association of a jurisdiction that a lawyer must pass in order to be admitted to the bar of that jurisdiction. Australia Administering bar exams is the responsibility of the bar associat ...

s. In 2013, he became the youngest recipient of the

Singapore Academy of Law The Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) is a promotion and development agency for Singapore's legal industry. SAL also undertakes statutory functions such as stakeholding services and the appointment of Senior Counsel, Commissioners for Oaths and No ...

's Singapore Law Merit Award.

Academic career

Goh returned to the

in 2008, where he was a teaching assistant until 2010. He was then appointed as an assistant professor from 2011 to 2014. Goh left NUS Law in June 2014. He had received four university and faculty teaching awards in six years in NUS. Goh became an associate professor of law at the Singapore Management University School of Law in July 2014. He was also appointed associate dean (research) in January 2016. Over two years, he received two faculty teaching awards. Goh became the dean of SMU Law in July 2017, succeeding Yeo Tiong Min. He was appointed for a five-year term after "a ix-monthextensive and rigorous global search". At 35, he was the youngest person to become dean, though he was already "a well-recognised and active expert in the legal profession". In July 2019, Goh was appointed a full professor of law at SMU. When he was dean, Goh also argued for the need for legislation to curb online falsehoods in public hearings before the Select Committee on Fake News that eventually resulted in the creation of the

Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019, commonly abbreviated as POFMA and known colloquially as Fake News Law, is a statute of the Parliament of Singapore that enables authorities to tackle the spread of fake news or false ...

Legal career

After obtaining his LLB, Goh was deployed as a Justices' Law Clerk in the

Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

from 2006 to 2008. In 2008, he became a Senior Justices' Law Clerk, then served as an Assistant Registrar of the Supreme Court. Goh has served as

amicus curiae An amicus curiae (; ) is an individual or organization that is not a Party (law), party to a legal case, but that is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. Wheth ...

to the

Court of Appeal An appellate court, commonly called a court of appeal(s), appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to Hearing (law), hear a Legal case, case upon appeal from a trial court or other ...

on numerous occasions. The court has described his written and oral submissions as "comprehensive, elegantly expressed, and lucidly organised", and as "models of clarity and conciseness". Goh was appointed senior counsel in January 2021. On 1 July 2022, Goh was appointed a Judicial Commissioner of the Supreme Court for a two-year term. On 1 October 2023, Goh was appointed a Judge of the High Court. In his work in the High Court, his areas of focus were finance, securities, banking, complex commercial cases; corporate insolvency; company, trusts and insolvency; intellectual property or information technology; and tort claims. On 4 November 2024, it was announced that Goh will be resigning as a Judge and will be appointed a Deputy Attorney-General on 1 January 2025. As Deputy Attorney-General, Goh argued in support of the constitutionality of the presumptions under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Professional appointments and awards

Goh is a board member of the Singapore Institute of Legal Education and the Singapore Judicial College.

Selected works

* Andrew B L Phang and Goh Yihan, ''Contract Law in Singapore'' (Alphen aan den Rijn: Wolters Kluwer, 2012) * Goh Yihan, ''Singapore Chronicles: Law'' (Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies-Straits Times Press, 2015) * Alvin See, Yip Man and Goh Yihan, ''Property and Trust Law in Singapore'' (Alphen aan den Rijn: Wolters Kluwer, 2018) * Goh Yihan, ''The Interpretation of Contracts in Singapore'' (Singapore: Thomson Reuters, 2018) * Goh Yihan, ''Pursuing Justice and Justice Alone: The Heart and Humanity of Andrew Phang's Jurisprudence'' (Singapore Academy of Law, 2022)

References

External links

Goh Yihan's CV
on the Judiciary's website {{DEFAULTSORT:Goh, Yihan 1981 births Living people Harvard Law School alumni Singaporean Senior Counsel National University of Singapore alumni Singaporean university and college faculty deans Law school deans Academic staff of Singapore Management University School of Law Singaporean expatriates in the United States