Claire Palley, OBE | |
---|---|
Born | |
Education | Durban Girls' College |
Alma mater | |
Awards | OBE |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Constitutional and human rights law |
Institutions |
Claire Dorothea Taylor Palley, OBE (born 17 February 1931) is a South African academic and lawyer who specialises in constitutional and human rights law. She was the first woman to hold a Chair in Law at a United Kingdom university when she was appointed at Queen's University Belfast in 1970.[1][2]
Pulley was born in South Africa in 1931. She attended Durban Girls' College before she went on to study at the University of Cape Town and after graduating took up a post as a lecturer in the Law School. She lived with her then husband Ahrn Palley for a while in Southern Rhodesia. The Palleys moved to Rhodesia in the belief that it would offer a more liberal political regime than the apartheid system which then existed in South Africa.[3] From 1962-1970 Ahrn Palley was Rhodesia's only Independent MP representing the predominantly black constituency of Highfield.[3] As an authority on constitutional and human rights law, Claire was Constitutional Adviser to the African National Council at the constitutional talks on Rhodesia held in Geneva in 1976.[4]
Her books cover international relations and contemporary history, as seen from the standpoint of a constitutional, international and human rights lawyer,[5] minority rights [6]
Her pioneering appointment as the first British woman law professor in 1970 at Queen's University Belfast[3] was initially overlooked. It was not until the appointment of Gillian White at Manchester in 1975 (the second woman to become a law professor in the United Kingdom) that Claire Palley's appointment was mentioned in The Times.[1]
She was later Professor of Law and Master of Darwin College, University of Kent from 1973 to 1984 and became Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford in 1984. A hall of residence at St Anne's is named for her.[7]
In 1997 she was received an OBE for services to human rights.[3]
((cite book))
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)