Goh Yihan

Goh Yihan (born 1981) is a Judge of the Supreme Court of Singapore. He was previously a Judicial Commissioner, and, before that, the Dean of the Singapore Management University School of Law.^[1]

Goh graduated from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law with a first class honours LLB 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.^[1]

Goh obtained his LLM from Harvard Law School in 2010. He had received the NUS University Overseas Scholarship in 2009 to pursue his postgraduate studies.^[1]

Goh was called to the Singapore Bar in 2011. He had received the Order of Merit in the 2006 bar examinations.^[1] In 2013, he became the youngest recipient of the Singapore Academy of Law's Singapore Law Merit Award.^[2]

Goh returned to the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law in 2008, where he was a teaching assistant until 2010. He was then appointed as an assistant professor from 2011 to 2014.^[1]

Goh left NUS Law in June 2014.^[3] He had received four university and faculty teaching awards in six years in NUS.^[1]

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.^[1]

Goh became the dean of SMU Law in July 2017, succeeding Yeo Tiong Min. He was appointed for a five-year term after "a [six-month] extensive and rigorous global search". At 35, he was the youngest person to become dean,^[4] though he was already "a well-recognised and active expert in the legal profession".^[2]

In July 2019, Goh was appointed a full professor of law at SMU.

After obtaining his LLB, Goh was deployed as a Justices' Law Clerk in the Supreme Court from 2006 to 2008. In 2008, he became a Senior Justices' Law Clerk, then served as an Assistant Registrar of the Supreme Court.^[1]

Goh has served as amicus curiae to the Court of Appeal on numerous occasions.^[1] The court has described his written and oral submissions as "comprehensive, elegantly expressed, and lucidly organised",^[5] and as "models of clarity and conciseness".^[6]

Goh was appointed senior counsel in January 2021.^[7]

On 1 July 2022, Goh was appointed a Judicial Commissioner of the Supreme Court for a two-year term.^[8]

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.^[9]

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.^[9]

Goh is a board member of the Singapore Institute of Legal Education and the Singapore Judicial College.^[4] He is also a visiting academic at Rajah & Tann.^[1]

• 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)

• Goh Yihan's CV on the Judiciary's website