A trio of judges from the UK and Australia have been appointed to Singapore’s International Commercial Court (SICC) by the country’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam. 

The appointments include Justice Lady Mary Arden DBE from the UK and Justices Anthony Besanko and Anthony Meagher from Australia who join the court as international judges (IJs) and will take up their positions in January.

Justice Arden is a former company law silk at Erskine Chambers, recognised for her contributions to company law reform. She was the first female High Court judge in the Chancery Division. Additionally, she served as the chair of the Law Commission for three years and has continued to take a keen interest in law reform. 

That was followed by 18 years as an appellate judge, where from 2005 to 2018 she led the UK judiciary’s international engagement, including with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Justice, the last two years of which were overshadowed by Brexit in a politically charged environment.  

Appointed as a UK Supreme Court Justice in October 2018, she retired in 2022 but still sits on the Permanent Court of Arbitration as an ad hoc UK judge of the ECHR in Strasbourg and as a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. 

Her legal expertise encompasses international relations law and various civil law areas, including equity, trusts, company law, insolvency, partnership, property law, constitutional and administrative law, human rights law and water law. 

Justice Besanko is a South Australian Bar member and has been Queen’s Counsel since 1994. He served on the SA Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal from 1989 to 2001 as president and was also president of the South Australian Bar Association from 2000 to 2001. 

Besanko was appointed to the Supreme Court of South Australia in 2001 before joining the Federal Court of Australia in 2006, serving until his retirement this year. 

He also sat as a judge in the Australian Capital Territory from 2007 to 2024 and as Chief Justice of Norfolk Island from 2015 to 2024. His areas of expertise are commercial law and company law, equity, public and administrative law, intellectual property, bankruptcy and company liquidations, and appeals. 

Justice Meagher qualified as a barrister and solicitor at Minter Ellison in 1976 before being called to the Bar in Sydney in 1982, becoming a Senior Counsel in 1995. He joined the NSW judiciary as a justice of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal in 2011, after 30 years at the commercial Bar – half of which was in silk – as Australia’s leading insurance barrister. 

On his retirement in 2024, he was the senior puisne judge on the Court of Appeal, having also sat in the Court of Criminal Appeal. His commercial law experience as a counsel and judge includes insurance, shipping, professional negligence, banking, corporate law, competition law and equitable remedies. Meagher recently joined the leading London insurance set 7 King's Bench Walk as an arbitrator, where he will hear insurance, commercial and maritime disputes. 

The appointments bring the total number of Supreme Court judges in Singapore to 35, which includes the Chief Justice and 24 IJs, led by Justice Philip Jeyaretnam, formerly of Dentons Rodyk. 

Earlier this year, former International Bar Association president and leading arbitrator David W. Rivkin joined the SICC as an international judge – the first American to do so – for a term ending in January 2027, while leading German IP judge Justice Peter Meier-Beck joined the court in June. 

The appointments come as Singapore’s parliament legislates to allow the SICC to hear civil appeals and other proceedings from specified foreign jurisdictions. If approved, the legislation would enable the SICC to handle transnational cases without connection to Singapore, enhancing the court’s capacity to manage international cases.

It follows a bilateral treaty between Singapore and Bahrain, establishing Bahrain’s International Commercial Court and permitting appeals to be directed to the SICC.