Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Alex Zhicheng Huang!

Welcome to Dr Alex Zhicheng Huang who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Dr Alex Huang’s research focuses on bankruptcy law, corporate law, judicial behavior, and the application of economics and data science to legal questions. His current projects involve the use of network analysis and natural language processing to examine a large number of judicial opinions related to Chapter 11 reorganization. He explores computational doctrinal analysis to examines the content of law—legal reasoning and justification—in an empirical way. Computational doctrinal analysis sets itself apart from both the outcome-oriented empirical legal studies and the case study-driven doctrinal analysis. Additionally, he is interested in the role of courts, judicial performance evaluation, and public trust in the judiciary, particularly the impacts of new technologies like artificial intelligence on these fields.

His writings have appeared in the Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal and Research of Institutional Economics, and he has contributed chapters to several books. His research has been featured in several media outlets and academic blogs including the Financial Times, The Deal, Reorg, Oxford Business Law Blog, and Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable. He has received several research awards, including the Best Paper Award at the Annual Law and Economics Conference in China and the Most Innovative Presentation Award at the INSOL ERA Annual Workshop.

Dr Alex Huang holds a JSD and LLM from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was named to the Dean’s List. He was also a Lloyd M. Robbins Fellow at the Berkeley School of Law and a Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Fellow at the Berkeley Center for the Study of Law and Society. He earned his Bachelor of Laws from Sun Yat-sen University, where he received the China National Scholarship.

Before teaching Cross-border Insolvency Law at HKU Law, he taught Law and Economics I & II, Sociology of Law, Law in Chinese Society, and Fundamentals of U.S. Law as a lecturer and graduate student instructor in the legal studies program and the law school at UC Berkeley.

Huang is also a Research Associate at the Sun Yat-sen University Law and Economics Research Center, where he serves as a co-investigator for a key project funded by the National Social Science Fund of China.

Alex Schwartz on The Changing Concepts of the Constitution (OJSL forthcoming)

"The Changing Concepts of the Constitution"
Alex Schwartz
Accepted for publication, forthcoming in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
Date Written: October 29, 2021

Abstract: There have been several important formal changes to the United Kingdom’s constitution over the past few decades, including devolution to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law; and the creation of a new Supreme Court. This article is about the informal semantic changes that may have accompanied these formal changes. It focuses on several central concepts: parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, the separation of powers, devolution, and human rights. Using a recently developed machine learning method to analyse a massive corpus of parliamentary debate, the article gauges the extent to which these concepts have become more (or less) related to the meaning of the United Kingdom’s constitution in parliamentary discourse. Ultimately, the analysis supports some important theoretical expectations about the changing nature of the constitution, including the claim that parliamentary sovereignty is now a less significant concept for the meaning of the constitution than it once was.

HKU Law and Technology Centre launched HKU AI Lawyer: Sentencing Predictor for Drug Trafficking

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning bring disruptive changes to legal practice. AI can be used to draw insights from past judicial decisions to predict future outcomes. In the criminal justice system, one essential aspect is sentencing. Much attention has been placed on how AI informs decisions about sentencing and how to use AI to assist people to obtain and make use of sentencing information.

Professor Anne Cheung of the Faculty of Law and Professor Ben Kao of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong and their research team have developed a Stage-1 model of HKU AI Lawyer - an AI-assisted sentencing predictor for the offence of trafficking in dangerous drugs in Hong Kong. The predictor is based on an innovative combination of legal domain knowledge and machine learning techniques. Users only need to provide relevant information through responding to four simple questions, and the predictor will generate an estimated term of imprisonment. Another useful feature of the predictor is that it will at the same time show the links to court decisions which are most relevant to the given facts. The sentencing predictor is a pragmatic tool for professionals including lawyers, social workers and teachers. It also serves to inform the public of likely legal consequences of committing drug trafficking offences.

A workshop was held on May 18 (Tuesday) to introduce the background of HKU AI Lawyer, with a demonstration of how to use the sentencing predictor, to lawyers, social workers and members of the community. Mr. Chan Man Ho, Deputy Director of the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, also shared his experience.

Media representatives were cordially invited to attend the workshop, with details as follows:

Date: May 18, 2021 (Tuesday)

Time: 2:00 – 3:15pm

Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU (map)

Language: Cantonese

Speakers:

Professor Anne Cheung

Co-Director, Law and Technology Centre

Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, HKU

Professor Ben Kao

Co-Director, Law and Technology Centre

Professor, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, HKU

Mr. Michael Cheung

Research Officer

Law and Technology Centre, Faculty of Law, HKU

Mr. Chan Man Ho

Deputy Director

The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups

** The workshop was simultaneously aired through Zoom:

Link: https://hku.zoom.us/j/96186396394

Meeting ID: 961 8639 6394

For media enquiries, please contact:

Ms. Grace Chan, Secretary, Law and Technology Centre, Faculty of Law, HKU (Tel: 3917-4727; Email: mcgrace@hku.hk)

Media Coverage

"Hong Kong drug offenders get clearer view of options as new computer program scans thousands of cases to determine likely sentences", SCMP, 19 May 2021.  For other media coverage, see the list on the Law and Technology Cente webpage.

HKU Law Students Win Inaugural Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational @ Georgetown Law (HK Lawyer)

"Hong Kong University Students Win Inaugural Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational by Creating AI-Powered Platform to Assist Injured Workers"

Hong Kong Lawyer
May 2020

Four students from the University of Hong Kong won the inaugural Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational organised by Georgetown Law with an AI-powered casebank to assist injured workers to get the compensation they deserve.

     The Iron Tech Lawyer Competition has been held for Georgetown Law students for 10 semesters by Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. In 2020, for the first time, Georgetown Law created an Invitational for students from other law schools around the world who participated in academic courses or supervised independent study to incorporate technology for access to justice (A2J) projects with non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

     Originally, the student teams from around the world were scheduled to attend the finals in Washington DC. Alas, with the COVID-19 pandemic and suspension of travel and universities, the initial preliminary round, finals, and subsequent faculty workshop on teaching A2J technology, were held virtually across 5 time zones via Zoom.

     The HKU team won first prize on April 17 by overcoming rigorous competition from 10 different student teams around the world. Many of the participating teams qualified for the Invitational only after being selected over competing teams in their own schools. All told, over 100 students participated in creating projects for the Invitational, producing over 25 different projects for non-profit organizations. ...
     Competition judge Miguel Willis said: “I was very impressed with the winner of this year’s Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational – The University of Hong Kong team’s EC Casebank solution takes a novel and highly sophisticated approach to enhance the legal capability of injured workers’ to receive just compensation for their claims – within a simple and easy to use interface… showing much promise to empower workers to be active participants in the resolution of their claims." ...
     The winning team comprised project leader Chloe Lok Wing Chan, UX designer and programmer Cuthbert Chow, natural language processing (NLP) and data management lead Jasmine Chi Man Poon and business management lead Iverson Chun Ming Wong. The students were part of the first cohort of students of the LITE course held at Hong Kong University, which is part of LITE Lab@HKU, a new interdisciplinary and experiential programme to foster law, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship (LITE) led by founding executive director Brian Tang... Click here to read the full text. 

David Law on The Global Language of Human Rights (Law & Ethics of Human Rights)

"The Global Language of Human Rights: A Computational Linguistic Analysis"

David Law

Law & Ethics of Human Rights
2018, Vol. 12, Issue 1

Abstract: Human rights discourse has been likened to a global lingua franca, and in more ways than one, the analogy seems apt. Human rights discourse is a language that is used by all yet belongs uniquely to no particular place. It crosses not only the borders between nation-states, but also the divide between national law and international law: it appears in national constitutions and international treaties alike. But is it possible to conceive of human rights as a global language or lingua franca not just in a figurative or metaphorical sense, but in a literal or linguistic sense as a legal dialect defined by distinctive patterns of word choice and usage? Does there exist a global language of human rights that transcends not only national borders, but also the divide between domestic and international law?

     Empirical analysis suggests that the answer is yes, but this global language comes in at least two variants or dialects. New techniques for performing automated content analysis enable us to analyze the bulk of all national constitutions over the last two centuries, together with the world’s leading regional and international human rights instruments, for patterns of linguistic similarity and to evaluate how much language, if any, they share in common. Specifically, we employ a technique known as topic modeling that disassembles texts into recurring verbal patterns. 

     The results highlight the existence of two species or dialects of rights talk — the universalist dialect and the positive-rights dialect — both of which are global in reach and rising in popularity. The universalist dialect is generic in content and draws heavily on the type of language found in international and regional human rights instruments. It appears in particularly large doses in the constitutions of transitional states, developing states, and states that have been heavily exposed to the influence of the international community. 

     The positive-rights dialect, by contrast, is characterized by its substantive emphasis on positive rights of a social or economic variety, and by its prevalence in lengthier constitutions and constitutions from outside the common law world, especially those of the Spanish-speaking world. Both dialects of rights talk are truly transnational, in the sense that they appear simultaneously in national, regional, and international legal instruments and transcend the distinction between domestic and international law. Their existence attests to the blurring of the boundary between constitutional law and international law.  Click here to download the paper.

Call for Papers:The Emergence of Computational Legal Studies @ HKU (June 28–29, 2018)

Call for Papers: The Emergence of Computational Legal Studies @ HKU

June 28 & 29, 2018, the University of Hong Kong

OVERVIEW:

     In recent decades, technology has had a profound influence on the practice of law, and the legal education landscape. Meanwhile, it has also begun to transform the way that scholars perform empirical legal research. Improved access to data, increased computational power, and the development of new analytic techniques have led to the emergence of a body of work that some refer to as “Computational Legal Studies.”

     Much of the scholarly discourse surrounding “Law and Technology” has focused on either the doctrinal issues raised by technological developments, or the impact of legal technologies on the practice of the law. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to Computational Legal Studies as such.

     The Department of Law at the University of Hong Kong, in conjunction with the University’s Law & Technology Centre, is excited to provide a venue for computational legal scholars to come together and discuss the promises and challenges facing this emerging body of research.

FORMAT: 
     We seek papers or presentations broadly related to Computational Legal Studies. Our definition of Computational Legal Studies is expansive, including:

• Research that applies computational data processing or analytic methods to questions of interest to legal scholars
• Work that explores computational legal studies as a sub-discipline
• Methodological work that develops or assess computational methods of interest to legal scholars

We are interested in hearing from scholars using any-and-all computational methods including: machine learning, natural language processing, large-data set analysis, network analysis, computer simulation and modeling, computational data collection, etc.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT:

     Some financial assistance may be available to partially offset travel costs.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE:

     To submit work, or inquire about the workshop please contact Ryan Whalen at whalen@hku.hk. 

     Submissions can include drafts of papers or extended abstracts (~500 words) about research projects you would like to undertake and present at the workshop. Submissions should be received by February 28, 2018. 

REWARD:

     Papers from the workshop will be made available in an edited volume.

Satyam Mukherjee and Ryan Whalen on "Priority Queuing on the Docket: Universality of Judicial Dispute Resolution Timing" (Frontiers in Physics)

"Priority Queuing on the Docket: Universality of Judicial Dispute Resolution Timing"
Satyam Mukherjee and Ryan Whalen
Frontiers in Physics

Accepted: 03 Jan 2018. 

Description: This paper analyzes court priority queuing behavior by examining the time lapse between when a case enters a court’s docket and when it is ultimately disposed of. Using data from the Supreme courts of the United States, Massachusetts, and Canada we show that each court’s docket features a slow decay with a decreasing tail. This demonstrates that, in each of the courts examined, the vast majority of cases are resolved relatively quickly, while there remains a small number of outlier cases that take an extremely long time to resolve. We discuss the implications for this on legal systems, the study of the law, and future research.

Ryan Whalen on Common Law Evolution and Judicial Impact in the Age of Information (Elon L Rev)

"Common Law Evolution and Judicial Impact in the Age of Information"
Ryan Whalen, Brian Uzzi and Satyam Mukherjee
Elon Law Review
Vol. 9, Issue 1

May 2017, pp. 115-170

Abstract: All common law systems draw from the past. As judges draft opinions, they cite to relevant case law to guide their decision making. These citations provide a record of how new legal developments draw on previous holdings. This Article presents the first thorough data-driven analysis of how different patterns of drawing from precedent are related to the influence a judicial opinion has on the evolution of the law.

     We show that there are previously undiscovered patterns in the way that common law systems evolve. By focusing on two measures of the age of the references cited in a judicial opinion—reach (average age of cited works) and range (variance of ages cited)—we find that there is one type of citation behavior that is strikingly more likely to be used in highly influential opinions. Cases featuring low reach and high range are more than twice as likely as other types of cases to go on to be highly influential opinions. Evidence for these conclusions is based on three sets of judicial opinions that span a century of time and diverse jurisdictions— the U.S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Supreme Court of India. While these three jurisdictions vary in the way they cite to precedent, the single referencing pattern found to exist behind especially influential cases suggests there is a nearly universal commonality in the evolution of the law.

     Our findings help us better understand how common law high courts draw from the past to support important legal holdings. In addition to our substantive findings, this article demonstrates the power of computational legal studies of large datasets to generate novel analyses and findings of previously undiscovered empirical legal patterns.  Click here to download the full article.