Alice Erh-Soon Tay and the Character of Legal Knowledge in Australia

Abstract

In 1975 Alice Erh-Soon Tay became the second woman law professor and the first woman Professor of Jurisprudence in Australia. Her career spanned almost the whole of the second half of the twentieth century. During this time she witnessed and contributed to both the rise of modern university legal education and the diversification of lawyers and scholars within Australia. Using Tay ’ s career as an illustration I argue that life histories of prominent women legal scholars are extremely valuable for reasons that aren’t typically acknowledged in law. Not only do they have the potential to identify important figures, they can also place the contributions of women into mainstream accounts of the character of legal knowledge .