| Claire Palley, OBE | |
| Birth Date: | 17 February 1931 |
| Birth Place: | Union of South Africa |
| Fields: | Constitutional and human rights law |
| Education: | Durban Girls' College |
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| Awards: | OBE |
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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]
Palley 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. 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 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.
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]