Court of Appeal and Supreme Court’s appellate division to get new judges

SINGAPORE – Hoo Sheau Peng, currently a High Court judge, will join the Court of Appeal from Oct 1, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office on Sept 25.

It added that Deputy Attorney-General Goh Yihan will be appointed a Judge of the Appellate Division, effective from that date.

The appointments were made by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

Hoo has been the Judge-in-Charge of the general division of the High Court since September 2023. She is also a governor of the Singapore Judicial College, a member of the Sentencing Advisory Panel and a member of the advisory board of the Singapore Management University (SMU) Yong Pung How School of Law.

The former President’s Scholar graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) from the University of Cambridge in 1992. She also holds a Master of Laws (intellectual property and technology) from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and a Master in Public Management from NUS’ Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Hoo has heard criminal, family and public law cases. She has also dealt with a range of civil matters on areas of law such as company, insolvency, trusts and intellectual property.

Goh has been Deputy A-G since January 2025 and oversees the work of the civil division of the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the Advocacy Group. Additionally, he oversees the work of the international legal cooperation team, which is part of the crime division.

Goh, himself a former High Court judge, graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) from NUS in 2006 as the valedictorian and obtained his Master of Laws from Harvard University in 2010.

He later taught at NUS and then SMU, where he was named Dean of the law school in 2017 and Professor of Law in 2019.

With the appointments of Goh and Hoo, the Supreme Court will have a total of 32 judges – the Chief Justice, four Justices of the Court of Appeal, five Judges of the Appellate Division, 16 Judges of the High Court, one Judicial Commissioner and five Senior Judges – and 26 International Judges.