Bernard Yeung Kam John Yeung Sik Yuen GOSK (born 1 January 1947) is a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Mauritius.

Career

After being called to the bar at

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1970, Yeung Sik Yuen returned to his native

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

and took a position as State Counsel in the office of the Attorney-General of Mauritius, wherein he served until 1976. After that he moved to the bench, serving first as a magistrate and from 1984 to 1989 as Master & Registrar and Judge in Bankruptcy. He was named a judge of the Supreme Court in 1989, and elevated to Senior

Puisne Judge A puisne judge or puisne justice (; from french: puisné or ; , 'since, later' + , 'born', i.e. 'junior') is a dated term for an ordinary judge or a judge of lesser rank of a particular court. Use The term is used almost exclusively in common law ...

in 1995. He was sworn in as Chief Justice on 13 June 2007, succeeding

Ariranga Pillay Ariranga Govindasamy Pillay (Tamil: ''அரி ரங்க கோவிந்தசாமி பிள்ளை''; born 14 June 1945) was the chief justice of Mauritius from 1996 until 2007, when he was succeeded by Y. K. J. Yeung Sik Yuen. ...

after the latter's retirement and was replaced on 31 December 2013 by Kheshoe Parsad Matadeen. He has also served as the Mauritian independent expert on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Personal life

Yeung Sik Yuen was born in

Curepipe Curepipe () also known as ''La Ville-Lumière'' (The City of Light), is a town in Mauritius, located in the Plaines Wilhems District, the eastern part also lies in the Moka District. The town is administered by the Municipal Council of Curepipe. ...

into a family of

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

Sino-Mauritian Mauritians of Chinese origin, also known as Sino-Mauritians or Chinese Mauritians, are Mauritians who trace their ethnic ancestry to China. Migration history Chinese migration from Sumatra to Mauritius Like members of other communities on th ...

businesspeople; his ancestors started out as shopkeepers and grew their company into various fields. He did his secondary education at St. Joseph's College, Curepipe and then in 1966 went to the United Kingdom to study law at the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

, completing his degree in 1969. He has been the President of the Lions Club of Port-Louis in 1988 and 2000. He is married with three children. His nephe
Michael
was Mauritius' Minister of Tourism and Leisure.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yeung Sik Yuen, Y. K. J. 1947 births Living people Alumni of the University of Leeds 20th-century Mauritian judges Mauritian people of Chinese descent People from Meixian District Mauritian expatriates in the United Kingdom Members of Lincoln's Inn People from Plaines Wilhems District Chief justices of Mauritius African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights members 21st-century Mauritian judges