Born in 1957, Justice Vijaya Kumar Rajah graduated from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law in 1982 and obtained his Masters of Law (First Class) from the University of Cambridge in 1986.[1] His father was the former Barisan Sosialis leader Thampore Thamby Rajah, better known as T.T. Rajah.[2]
He was among the first batch of lawyers in Singapore to be appointed Senior Counsel in 1997,[1] and was once the managing partner of law firm Rajah & Tann. He was also part of the famous National University of Singapore (NUS) law school moot team which won the Philip C. Jessup International Law moot competition in 1982, a first for NUS. The other members of the team were Davinder Singh, Jimmy Yim, and Steven Chong.
He was first appointed Judicial Commissioner in 2 January 2004, Judge of the High Court in 1 November 2004, and subsequently Judge of Appeal in April 2007.
Justic Rajah's publications include Judicial Management in Singapore (with T.C. Choong, Singapore: Butterworths, 1990). He was also the chair of a committee that produced an influential report in 2007 reviewing Singapore's legal sector.[3]