2 new Court of Appeal judges among 5 Supreme Court appointments

SINGAPORE - Two Supreme Court judges will have new roles come Oct 1, with a new judicial commissioner also appointed.

In addition, two new international judges have been appointed to the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) from Jan 5, 2026, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement on Sept 19.

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam has appointed High Court judges Ang Cheng Hock and Hri Kumar Nair as justices of the Court of Appeal from Oct 1, 2025. Ms Low Siew Ling has been appointed a judicial commissioner from the same date, on a two-year term.

The Court of Appeal, High Court and SICC are part of the Supreme Court system.

Judicial commissioners have the powers of a judge and are appointed for a specific period determined by the President, according to the Singapore Courts website.

Meanwhile, Justice David John Goddard of New Zealand and Justice Nigel Teare of Britain will serve on the SICC bench from Jan 5, 2026, to Jan 4, 2027.

Justice Ang became a senior counsel in 2009 at age 38, making him one of the youngest lawyers to do so, the PMO said. A former senior partner at local law firm Allen & Gledhill, Justice Ang was a judicial commissioner and deputy attorney-general, and also had a previous stint as a High Court judge from August 2019 to September 2022.

He was appointed to his current High Court role on May 1, 2025.

Justice Nair was appointed senior counsel in 2008 and served as an MP from 2006 to 2015. He was appointed deputy attorney-general in March 2017, and then a High Court judge in January 2023.

As a judge, Justice Nair’s areas of specialisation include complex commercial cases and criminal appeals.

Ms Low, who is currently the chief counsel in the civil division of the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), was a justices’ law clerk and then an assistant registrar in the Supreme Court, after she joined the Legal Service Commission (LSC) on graduating from the National University of Singapore.

She received an LSC scholarship and earned a Master of Laws at Harvard Law School in 2008, and was posted to the AGC upon her return. In her current role, she advises the Government on a wide range of legal matters, including constitutional and administrative law issues.

Justice Goddard is currently an honorary professorial fellow at the Melbourne University Law School, and an international fellow with the Singapore Judicial College in the Supreme Court of Singapore.

He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2003 and as judge of the New Zealand High Court and Court of Appeal in July 2019. He retired from the Bench on July 31, 2025, after six years of judicial service.

Among his appointments, he was chair of the Diplomatic Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which adopted the Hague Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters in July 2019.

Sir Teare was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1991 and received the customary knighthood in 2006. He was first appointed a judge in 2006 and retired from the Bench in October 2020. He returned to active practice as an arbitrator in commercial and shipping disputes, and is currently a deemster (judge) in the Isle of Man High Court.

With these new appointments, the Supreme Court will have a total of 37 judges and 26 international judges, the PMO said.