Claire Palley

Claire Dorothea Taylor Palley (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.

Life 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. In Rhodesia she worked on completing her PhD dissertation on the history of the constitutional law and history of Southern Rhodesia between 1888-1965 for which she would later publish a book about. From 1962-1970 Ahrn Palley was Rhodesia's only Independent MP representing the predominantly black constituency of Highfield.

Her books cover international relations and contemporary history, as seen from the standpoint of a constitutional, international and human rights lawyer, minority rights

Her pioneering appointment as the first British woman law professor in 1970 at Queen's University Belfast

In 1997 she was received an OBE for services to human rights.

Selected publications The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia 1888-1965: With Special Reference to Imperial Control (Clarendon Press,1966) Constitutional Law and Minorities (Minority Rights Group, 1978) The United Kingdom and Human Rights (The Hamlyn Trust, 1991) An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004 (Hart Publishing, 2005)