They were teacher and student and are now colleagues in NUS Faculty of Law. Feel awkward? Professor Thio Li-ann, “not at all, it has been a great pleasure to have my former students like her, become my present colleagues.” Dr Tan Seow Hon, “Other than when I initially found it hard to call her by her first name in the first few months, no.”

Tan An Qi finds out more about these two personalities who have both won the Excellent Teachers Awards (in different years), and evidently share profound respect for each other.
Q: Is legal philosophy more of law or is it more of philosophy?
Dr Tan Seow Hon: I have no witty answer, so instead, I shall thank you for
letting me make a pitch for my courses Jurisprudence and Introduction to Legal Theory.

I get students to think about fundamental questions about the enterprise of law, challenge students to rethink false givens and use divisive issues such as abortion to spark interest.

Surprisingly, Harvard professor Roberto Unger, who teaches jurisprudence, said that running up against the limits of philosophy is indispensable to our knowledge of it. I want students to engage not just their minds, but their hearts, and to come up with their own theory about the legal process.

Q: What has law got to do with politics?
Prof Thio Li-ann: This depends on the theory of law one might adopt – whether law is objective and independent of ‘subjective’ politics or whether politics
grounds law.

‘Politics’, which might be seen as ‘subjective’, can influence the content of law as well as how it is judicially interpreted. Why then might a politicized judiciary be objectionable but not a politicized Legislature? We might think that a political claim can be asserted e.g. through lobbying, but a legal claim or right should have a legal remedy e.g. as a justiciable entitlement. Let me ask you, what is the difference between the study of law and the study of political science, since the subject-matter of these disciplines overlap?

Q: How would you describe your experience in law school?
Tan: I was already interested in academia, and so worked hard. Although Jurisprudence in fourth year was the most meaningful thing that happened to me in
terms of academic courses, my strongest memory of was from a class in LLM. I
remember how difficult it was to express a view that was against the orthodoxy at
Harvard, and how the atmosphere created by classmates can be stifling and
nearly sneering, even though I believe I won the respect of the class in the end.
The best thing about holding a minority view in that class was how I began to
value doing my best to ensure that those who perceive themselves as dissenting
would be comfortable enough to speak up, which is very important when conducting
a class.

Thio: Diligent and enthusiastic when it came to subjects I liked like administrative law, public international law and to the surprise of some, company law. I was not that good a student in terms of faithfully attending lectures etc… I was more focused on other pursuits of an enduring or eternal quality than the study of law. Indeed, much of my Second Year, where there are no exams, was spent punting on the Cherwell and attending folk-rock concerts either in Oxford or London with a fellow guitar-playing friend.

Memories of my undergraduate life are infused with a mix of pleasure and pain.

My criminal law tutorials with another Irish girl were conducted by a London barrister who used to come down on Friday night, suggesting that we go to the pub for class. Once, I was really bored and wanted to throw a distraction. We were studying rape or something and the details of the cases were not very savoury. My tutorial mate Pat was a raving feminist and I had not finished the reading list. So to distract my tutor, I said that I had not read all the cases because I was a girl and should not be exposed to such vulgarity. That set Pat off on a rant. Soon, time was up, the tutorial had ended.

Another vivid memory was my Trusts law classes with the famed Professor James Harris who was blind. He never switched on the lights in class and my tutorial mate, a mature American student, and I were too shy to ask him to. The classes were held in Winter term and I was always edging towards the window to get some light to read my notes. Dr. Harris was never a sympathetic tutor and once chastised me for not being prepared before I protested that I had spent the past 2 weeks in bed recovering from chicken-pox (being blind, he could neither see my scars nor my evident distress).

Q: Having gone so far in your academic pursuits, was it a natural path for you?
Tan: Naturally, if you love or care for something very much, you’d want to
impart your passion and share your thoughts, and teaching and writing allow that. I like Jurisprudence because it makes people think about what I think are the weightier matters of the law, because it makes us think about life.

Thio: Not at all. My primary goal was to practice as a corporate lawyer in London, but providentially, I ended up being a public law and international law academic in Singapore. But that’s a different and a long story which might be purchased by a blueberry muffin from Spinellis and a latte.

The function of a researcher, as someone once quipped, is to look in dark places and to shed light on what she sees there. Research wise, the subjects which interest me – public international law and constitutional law – are born of the same impulses and ideals which are the attempts to entrench and secure human dignity and good governance in an imperfect world.

Q: What was special about Prof Thio as your Public Law tutor?
Tan: After Prof Thio’s very first public law tutorial, I told one classmate I had
never seen anyone teach like that before. There was just something different and tireless about the way she taught. I guess the best way of complimenting her would be to say that she taught as if her life depended on it. I told myself that day that I was going to try my best to win the public law prize.

Well, what I thought of her is best summed up by the footnote tribute in a Law Review article I wrote as a student, which I understand inspired this article of yours.

Q: What was special about Dr Tan as a student in your Public Law class?
Thio: Dr. Tan was exceptional as a public law student and won the public law
prize, unsurprisingly. She stood head and shoulders above her classmates despite
her physically short stature. Her superior intellect was already evident as a young student. An original thinker; she dominated her public law tutorial with flashing eyes, forceful, cogent and clearly articulated opinions. In short, she kicked intellectual ass.

Aside from a few others like Burton Ong, I have not had a student since of her startling intellectual calibre and I still lament “Where have all the Tan Seow Hons gone?”

Dr Tan teaches Jurisprudence, International Commercial Litigation and Introduction to Legal Theory.

Prof Thio teaches Public Law and Public International Law.

An Qi is a second year law student and the Juris Editor.